The NEW 

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ORTHODOXY 



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EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 



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THE NEW ORTHODOXY 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
NEW YORK 

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
LONDON 

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI 



THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY 
SHANGHAI 



THE 

NEW ORTHODOXY 



By 

EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 

Author of "The Psychology of Religious Experience" "The Higher 
Individualism" and "The Divinity of Christ" 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 




Copyright igi8 and 1925 By 
The University of Chicago 



All Rights Reserved 



Published October 1918 
Second Impression February igig 
Third Impression December 1920 
Second Edition April 1925 



Composed and Printed By 
The University of Chicago Press 
Chicago, Illinois. U.S.A. 




©C1A823754 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 



At the present time many circumstances 
contribute to the demand for brief, con- 
structive statements of religion. Technical 
scholarship in numerous fields has furnished 
rich and abundant materials, but they are 
not easy of access to the general reader. 
In the future these will be more adequately 
organized and vitalized in comprehensive 
interpretations. At the moment men's 
minds are impatient of elaboration and 
speculation. The war has developed in- 
quiry concerning these questions with 
characteristic directness and poignancy. 
Already it has elicited remarkable activity 
in the restatement of traditional faiths. 
But no earnestness in the reaffirmation of 
the conventional views can satisfy those 
who are really awake to the problems and 
outlook of these days. 

A new world of thought and ideals has 
arisen. Religion has its place in this new 



vi Preface to the First Edition 

order, not as something aloof, but as some- 
thing organic and integral with all other 
vital interests. All who truly dwell in this 
new world of the natural and the social sci- 
ences have certain attitudes and habits of 
thought in common. These constitute the 
new orthodoxy of method and spirit. It 
differs from the old orthodoxy as chemis- 
try differs from alchemy and as empirical, 
reasonable beliefs differ from the dogmas 
of tradition imposed by external authority. 

This book seeks to present in simple 
terms a view of religion consistent with the 
mental habits of those trained in the sci- 
ences, in the professions, and in the expert 
direction of practical affairs. It suggests a 
dynamic, dramatic conception designed to 
offer a means of getting behind specific 
forms and doctrines. It aims to afford a 
standpoint from which one may realize the 
process in which ceremonials and beliefs 
arise and through which they are modified. 
When thus seen religion discloses a deeper, 
more intimate, and more appealing char- 
acter. As here conceived it is essentially 



Preface to the First Edition vii 

the dramatic movement of the idealizing, 
outreaching life of man in the midst of his 
practical, social tasks. The problems of 
the religious sentiments, of personality, of 
sacred literature, of religious ideals, and 
of the ceremonials of worship are other 
terms which might have been employed 
as the titles of the successive chapters. 

E. S. A. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
EDITION 

A new edition of this book presents an 
opportunity for a further definition of 
orthodoxy, both of the old and the new. 
The orthodox view of religion may ordina- 
rily be regarded as the prevailing view, but 
in a time like the present when even popu- 
lar thought is being awakened by surprising 
discoveries and unprecedented methods of 
study and interpretation, a more discrimi- 
nating use of terms is demanded. A lady 
to whom this book was recommended re- 
marked upon observing its title, "No, thank 
you, I do not care to read anything that is 
orthodox/' Her conception was doubtless 
much the same as that of a "liberal" 
minister who recently wrote: "All religions 
tend toward orthodoxy, that is toward 
changing from something vital and flowing 
to a static set of doctrines and a cramped 
attitude of mind. ' 9 This he regards as apos- 



ix 



x Preface to the Second Edition 

tasy from "the principle of free inquiry into 
all questions bearing upon the religious life." 

It is the purpose of this book to insist 
that there has come into the world a new- 
orthodoxy which is precisely the mainte- 
nance of this principle of free inquiry. 
Orthodoxy means right thinking. It does 
not properly signify adherence to a fixed 
system of dogmas, and certainly is not to 
be identified with a bigoted or prejudiced at- 
titude of mind. It is true that in the past, 
religious thought, and also all other kinds 
of thought, sought too much for static, un- 
changeable truths. But that is no longer 
considered right thinking. Science in every 
field has shown the necessity and the ad- 
vantage of the open mind. It does not 
endeavor merely to reproduce the past or 
to expound authoritative, traditional be- 
liefs. It regards life as a forward-moving 
process, marked by discovery, novelty, and 
adventure. Consequently, the tables are 
completely turned. The old orthodoxy, in 
so far as it denounces free inquiry, question- 
ing, and doubt, has become the great 



Preface to the Second Edition xi 

apostasy. It hinders experimentation and 
inhibits growth. The new orthodoxy is an 
attitude which welcomes investigation, 
seeks release from bondage to authority, 
and cherishes faith in the possibility of a 
fuller, richer life. 

Yet the new recognizes a certain con- 
tinuity with the old. Even though the old 
orthodoxy disclaims any kinship with the 
new, still the new insistently regards itself 
as a champion of the best things of an 
ancient developing faith springing from a 
deep soil and a hardy root in the spiritual 
nature of man. An important feature of 
the new orthodoxy is this appreciation of 
history and of the stages through which 
religion has become what it is today. This 
continuity is also psychological. Religion 
of all kinds moves primarily in the emo- 
tional and volitional levels of experience. 
Ideas, doctrines, and beliefs are projec- 
tions from these profounder depths. They 
are very important and have much sig- 
nificance but they are not primary. They 
react upon the impulsive life, but they do 



xii Preface to the Second Edition 

not create it nor do they often succeed in 
displacing it. 

Religion arises from real needs, from the 
need for companionship in great under- 
takings, for comfort in defeat and loss, for 
courage to go on with hard tasks, for pic- 
tures of future success after hard travail of 
soul. The stories of Old Testament heroes 
are stories of love, adventure, and patriot- 
ism, infused with a sense of divine purposes 
and angelic messengers. The story of the 
New Testament is a continuation of the old 
romance of faith with new characters and 
new scenery. Modern religion voices the 
same hunger and thirst for righteousness 
and justice and peace in a world of railways 
and electric lights. Men still listen eagerly 
for prophetic words, and long for escape 
from their mistakes and their sins. With 
the same wistful faces they strive to lift 
the veil from the mysteries about them. 
The fact that they have accumulated more 
experience and have devised more clever 
instruments in the quest does not quench 
their zest. The quest still continues. 



Preface to the Second Edition xiii 

Religion, like art and science, arises in 
human experience from the fact that man 
lives his life in a double fashion, in immedi- 
ate experience and in imagination, and 
forever weaves the two together. He 
plows his fields in fact and also in ceremo- 
nial drama. He sings plaintively when lost 
or overthrown and shouts joyously when 
victorious. The hunter trails the beast 
of prey to death and draws pictures of the 
kill. All man's days are lived in the 
warmth of friendship and in fear of foes, 
and the life of his imagination is filled with 
mightier friends and deadlier foes. Strug- 
gling to realize his wishes in the little circle 
of his hearth and neighborhood, he feels 
the whole world carries patterns of his own 
moral warfare. A dynamic, outreaching 
urge, an expansive energy of will, is the 
basic fact. The intellectual forms in which 
it is embodied, and by which to some extent 
it is directed and controlled, are develop- 
ments and elaborations. Man naturally 
loves his fife and all that furthers and en- 
larges it. This will to live is the source of 



xiv Preface to the Second Edition 

his values. In his reflective moments he 
seeks to understand and to assess them. 
In his appreciative moods he contemplates 
and enjoys them, is moved and inspired by 
them. Religion, in all ages, is devotion to 
these values, expressed in ceremonials, 
meditation, and good works. Just what 
the specific values are and the hierarchy in 
which they are placed depends upon the 
cultures of particular groups and the stages 
of their development. Likewise, the sym- 
bols of these values change, always bearing 
an intimate and vital relation to the general 
life in which they appear. 

This maintenance and representation of 
values is the important thing. The old 
way of thinking is solicitous that the new 
way does not secure and cherish them, and 
is therefore distrustful of it. But the new 
orthodoxy is profoundly concerned with all 
the ideal values of life, and it is just because 
of this concern that it seeks to think about 
them in the way that is most clarifying and 
convincing. It holds that the values which 
constitute the soul of religion — love of life, 



Preface to the Second Edition xv 



reverence for its concrete forms, apprecia- 
tion for great perspectives both toward the 
past and the future, trust in its growing 
ideals — enter into many types of symbol- 
ism, liturgical and creedal, and that they 
will continue to do so. Religion thus con- 
ceived keeps its hold upon the actual reali- 
ties of man's normal existence but at the 
same time lifts the imagination to the 
widest possible horizons afforded by the 
time-charts of modern science and by our 
growing appreciation of the vast reaches 
and complexity of the homeliest acts. 
Nothing human is foreign to it. No depths 
of misfortune or guilt elude it, and no wis- 
dom or beauty is alien to it. 

This new orthodoxy, experimental, rea- 
sonable, generous, and dauntless, furnishes 
hope for better understanding between dif- 
ferent forms of faith. It certainly cannot 
be content with mere tolerance of diverse 
systems. Every serious form of religion is 
worthy of more than tolerance. When its 
historical and cultural setting is properly 
appraised, each cultus gains a meaning 



xvi Preface to the Second Edition 

which admits it to the great family of reli- 
gions in its proper time and place. Exist- 
ing faiths do not all belong to the present 
date on the calendar. Some are survivals. 
Others are beginnings. All have some ap- 
peal within their milieu. The social order 
is stratified with formations from different 
periods of time analogous to the various 
geological formations of the earth's surface. 
But increasing popular education, travel, 
and communication are creating a society 
of enlightened people over the world, eager 
for a form of religion in keeping with their 
enlightenment. The foreign students in 
any great university furnish an impressive 
illustration of this new cosmopolitan so- 
ciety. 

The view which this book aims to express 
has practical bearing also upon the question 
of union among religious people. The 
Roman Catholic church is an illustration of 
the futility of attempting to comprehend 
all Christians under a rigid ecclesiasticism. 
Protestantism has repeatedly proved the 
impossibility of formulating a creed which 



Preface to the Second Edition xvii 

can unify its sects. There remains the 
opportunity of undertaking to draw to- 
gether at least the peoples of Western cul- 
ture in a religious movement which is not 
primarily a creed or a priestly order but a 
method by which religious views of life and 
conduct may be freely fashioned and re- 
fashioned in keeping with new experience 
and enlarging faith. 

The use of this method brings religion 
out of its muscle-bound rigidity into the 
freedom of vital growth and useful adapta- 
tion. If it thereby surrenders claims to 
absoluteness and finality, it yet gains con- 
creteness and working power. This is 
what science has achieved for itself by its 
experimental, tentative use of hypotheses 
rather than by the assertion of fixed entities 
and eternal laws. The old demand for 
final definitions and iron categories has 
been given up in the domain of art much 
to its enrichment and serviceability. Carl 
Sandburg expressed this tendency in the 
realm of poetry by venturing to formulate 
thirty-eight definitions of poetry which 



xviii Preface to the Second Edition 



were published in the Atlantic Monthly. 
Something like this loosening up of mind 
is needed with reference to the conception 
of religion. The following paragraphs il- 
lustrate the application of this principle to 
religion. 

Of course there is no one definition of 
poetry. Nor is there any one statement of 
the nature of religion. The subject is so 
many sided that it will not be contained in 
any set formula, however carefully con- 
sidered. It is like life itself — rich, irides- 
cent, flowing, full of "depths, crypts, cross- 
lights, and moon- wisps/' Let me then con- 
struct a few definitions of religion which 
had better be used as suggestions for mak- 
ing up other definitions endlessly, rather 
than as propositions to be committed to 
memory and adopted once for all. 

Religion is living the best kind of life one can 
conceive with enthusiasm and trust. 

Religion is the turning of the soul to God. 

Religion is loving one's neighbor as one's self. 

Religion is taking the world as a fairy land of 
beauty and love within sight of garbage dumps 
and fist fights. 



Preface to the Second Edition xix 

Religion is the endeavor to move mountains with 
a wish of the heart or the whispering wings of hope. 

Religion is a battle between a sword and a cross. 

Religion is a quest for life in an abyss of death. 

Religion is life among angels and demons with 
wireless signals of distress and comfort. 

Religion is the loss of everything but courage. 

Religion is a song and a prayer on a corner where 
street-car lines intersect and the cries of the news- 
boys mingle with the roar of the elevated. 

Religion is marching with red banners and the 
blare of trumpets through muddy streets. 

Religion is faith in a dead man nailed to a tree. 

Religion is feasting on the dead man's flesh and 
drinking his blood. 

Religion is claiming forgiveness beyond the 
stars for murder done here on the earth. 

Religion is sitting together under a wind-blown 
roof and listening to the crooning hymns and the 
begging prayers of wistful souls. 

Religion is living in imagination with a lot of 
Jews and with one Jew in particular. 

Religion is a breath of daring silence in the din 
of angry clatter and profanity. 

Religion is composure of soul when the ocean 
liner sinks. 

Religion is the mirth of kindred spirits round a 
glowing fire with the shadows playing over a 
vacant chair. 



xx Preface to the Second Edition 

Religion is dumb wonder under the starry sky 
and over the cradle of a babe. 

Religion is the rapture of a timid heart in the 
light of the sun, or in the fragrance of a flower. 

Religion is a corporation not for profit, produc- 
ing wealth and offering it to paupers on condition 
of a bath. 

Religion is a reform movement struggling 
against many obstacles a great number of which 
are imaginary. 

Religion is a grand opera company singing the 
"Hallelujah Chorus." 

Religion is the longing of a mother for a lost son 
when that longing turns into affection for other 
sons who have lost their mothers. 

Religion is the soft warmth of a bird's wing and 
the cool shade of a tree. 

Religion is an outlook from a mountain top 
with clouds floating below, making little gray 
patches on the widespreading plain in the distance. 

Religion is the bond between the spring sowing 
and the autumn harvest. 

Religion is the fiery furnace from which comes 
forth under the eye of grimy, perspiring men 
molten iron to be fashioned into steel beams and 
girders. 

Religion is a view of a sleeping city at midnight 
when the moon is full. 

Religion is a journey from Chicago's west side to 



Preface to the Second Edition xxi 

the lake front, or from New York's east side to 
Broadway and back again, without loss of memory. 

Religion is joy in the odor of ether in a hospital, 
or of new-mown hay in harvest. 

Religion is an adventure in the interior of China 
or Tibet without guns or body-guards in search of 
no plunder or concessions. 

Religion is the bleaching of black souls white on 
the shores of reflection and new deeds. 

Religion is the preservation of childhood tender- 
ness and trust with the experience and sorrow of 
old age. 

Religion is the bond of love encircling the earth 
and binding the world to the heart of God. 

People are frequently confused between 
belief in God and theories about God. 
There is no statement or formulation of his 
nature which can satisfy all demands of the 
intellect and the heart. A wealth of inter- 
ests appear in the conceptions of God in the 
most devout literature. In the Bible itself 
there is no single, logical definition. God is 
love. God is light. God is spirit. If such 
assertions are taken freely, with the rich sug- 
gestions which they imply, then they are 
useful and persuasive. But when they are 
made the basis of hard and fast dogmas 



xxii Preface to the Second Edition 

they defeat the very ends of religion and 
lead to atheism and doubt as often as to 
faith and assurance. The main question 
about God for religion as an active, buoy- 
ant, outreaching participation in life is: 
Do you believe in God? Meaning : Do you 
trust life? Do you think there are some 
things better than others? Is it worth 
while to work for ideal causes, to sacrifice 
something of your comfort and peace of 
mind, to count yourself a co-worker with 
God? When you ask what kind of being 
God is, where he is, how old he is, how 
powerful he is, whether he created the 
world, whether he has made man immortal, 
whether he will punish the wicked in a fiery 
hell, while the righteous He in celestial ham- 
mocks under shady fruit trees by cool 
streams, then you are asking questions 
which may call for speculative answers, but 
which may not have immediate practical 
religious value. It is not essential to a 
successful religion to have a consistent or 
even an intellectually satisfactory doctrine 
of God, as the history of religion shows. 



Preface to the Second Edition xxiii 

But it is essential to believe in God in some 
sense, and to take definite attitudes on 
behalf of his government of the world. 
You may accept my faith in God without 
accepting my conception of his nature or 
of his relation to the world. I do not say 
that the faith can be the same in every 
respect where the doctrines differ, but I 
believe it can be for practical purposes. 

The author would like to remind the 
reader that this book is the outgrowth not 
only of academic studies in the field of reli- 
gion but also of many years of experience 
in the pastorate of a church. In the latter 
relation at least, the ideas here presented 
have been tested out in a very practical 
way. One evidence of the hearty response 
with which they have met is the fact that 
the church heartily indorsed and authorized 
the publication of the book. Since its first 
publication there have been increasing evi- 
dences that many thoughtful people find in 
some such statement satisfying answers to 
vital questions about religion. 

E. S. A. 

January i, 1925 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The New Orthodoxy: Its Attitudes i 

II. The New Orthodoxy: Its Dramatis 

Personae 29 

III. The New Orthodoxy: Its Growing 

Bible 54 

IV. The New Orthodoxy: Its Changing 

Goal 83 

V. The New Orthodoxy: Its New Drama 107 



XXV 



CHAPTER I 

THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
ATTITUDES 

Thoughtful people are aware that the 
opening decades of this twentieth century 
have already defined one of the most im- 
portant epochs in history. The century 
was ushered in with a consciousness of 
progress and of new developments such as 
no other century has known. Everywhere 
were recounted the inventions, the discov- 
eries, the revolutionary achievements in 
democaacy, in education, in the arts, in in- 
dustry, and in religion. What was then 
clear to a few is now becoming familiar to 
the vast multitudes of laborers and peas- 
ants in every land. Social revolutions have 
written in blood and tears the end of the 
old and the beginning of the new. In- 
dustrial and political forces have wrought 
spectacular transformations in all human 
affairs. Airplanes, wireless messages, and 



2 The New Orthodoxy 



X-rays are no more wonderful or signif- 
icant than rising democracy in China or 
the swelling tide of knowledge and power 
among the hitherto subject masses of all 
civilized countries. An abyss of measure- 
less dimensions stretches between the old 
and the new epochs of man's life. It is not 
so much a distance of time as of interests 
and ideals. Looking back from the pres- 
ent across a score of years, how remote 
and diminished the old order seems! The 
majesty of its empires and the glitter of its 
royal courts drop into the same overwhelm- 
ing gulf which has entombed giants and 
fairies and armored knights. Their au- 
thority has disappeared. Nothing of that 
vanished world commands the allegiance 
of men simply because it was part of that 
age. Only those things can be perpetuated 
which are renewed in the living experience 
of succeeding days. If it was once suffi- 
cient that spiritual values be proclaimed 
by prophets and priests, it has now become 
necessary that they shall be proved anew by 
each generation for itself. 



Its Attitudes 



3 



For this new time, already begun for 
those who are truly at home in the twen- 
tieth century of the spiritual calendar of 
mankind, how shall the picture of man's 
life and destiny be drawn? They have 
thrown off the rule of superstition and the 
authority of kings and priests. They do 
not believe in miracles. Their world is not 
divided by the clouds into human and 
divine, nor by forms of dress or types of 
architecture into sacred and secular. Nor 
are they content with mere denial. Icono- 
clasm is not the mark of really modern 
men. They seek to build, to construct, to 
create. In place of dungeons of fear, irra- 
tional creeds, and magical rituals they are 
not content to leave only barrenness and 
doubt. New hopes, better doctrines, and 
more satisfying symbols are springing up 
out of the idealism and faith of the emanci- 
pated mind and heart. As in the sixteenth 
century the small earth-centered universe 
gave way to a cosmos of stellar spaces of 
incalculable magnitude, and as the little 
six thousand years of mundane existence 



4 The New Orthodoxy 



expanded into the hundreds of thousands 
of years for the setting of the human 
drama, so the simple picture of Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress has dissolved into the 
gigantic struggle of hundreds of millions 
of men over the whole earth to realize an 
actual and visible society of righteousness, 
justice, and love. The cravings of the 
souls of men are no longer to be satisfied 
with the dream of individual salvation after 
this life in a walled town with jeweled gates 
and flashing pavements, outside of which 
in unending night and pain the infinitely 
greater number of their fellow-men forever 
wander, tortured and damned. 

What religious conceptions are adequate 
to the dawning day of our larger mental 
and moral life ? Dare we hope that these 
shall be found in the revival of some mys- 
terious cult of the prescientific childhood of 
the race — in theosophy or some oriental 
mystery-religion ? Is it imaginable that 
we are to be content with some pretentious 
propaganda of healing which begins by 
renouncing the very foundations of science 



Its Attitudes 



5 



and the common-sense reality of practical 
experience ? The refusal of minds of first 
rank to accept these religions cannot be 
offset by any number of devotees gathered 
from those who are not aware of the prog- 
ress which has been made in the physical 
and social sciences. These movements do 
undoubtedly answer certain real needs of 
human nature and are obviously conducted 
by shrewd administrators and propagan- 
dists, but to suppose that they represent 
an adequate provision for the many-sided 
and profound claims of the human spirit is 
an illusion which time will expose. 

There is more reasonable hope that the 
great historic development of religion rep- 
resented by Christianity is destined to 
come to a new birth of power. This can- 
not be expected to occur, however, through 
a mere emotional revival of its traditional 
forms and doctrines. These have outlived 
the order of society in which they ap- 
peared and are already transcended by 
the leaders of religious thought still working 
within their domains. Such mighty social 



6 The New Orthodoxy 



structures do not pass away at a stroke. It 
required centuries to build them, and they 
linger on in the world just as monarchies 
persist long after democracy has become 
the accepted political ideal of the world. 
Christianity has lived through three marked 
stages and, it is believed by many, is now 
entering upon a fourth. The first was its 
earliest form, in which it was a tremen- 
dously vital impulse to a higher, freer 
moral life among informal intimate groups, 
having their common bond in allegiance to 
the personality and inspiring message of 
Jesus of Nazareth. That period is directly 
reflected in our New Testament. Upon its 
pages are the fresh imprints of the vibrant, 
pulsing spirit of the Master. But there is 
little organization. It has been impossible 
for the most searching scholarship to find 
there a model for the conduct of the mod- 
ern church. No fixed ritual is established. 
No clear and uniform body of doctrine is 
presented. No provision can be traced 
there for economic justice and social 
righteousness as needed by the twentieth 



Its Attitudes 



7 



century. But the moral aspiration and 
insight are there. The clear, commanding 
spiritual vision of Jesus shines through it as 
the rays of the rising sun illumine and 
warm the world. That record will there- 
fore remain a source of inspiration to the 
end of time. 

The second stage of Christianity was 
that known as Catholicism. It developed 
by the gradual extension of the faith to 
great numbers of communities throughout 
the Roman Empire and among barbarian 
tribes. Contact with Greek philosophy 
was also a great factor in formulating the 
conceptions of the early church. When 
Christianity permeated the empire it was 
inevitable that it should be affected by 
the Latin genius for organization and by 
the Greek power of reflective thought. The 
ecclesiastical institution known to us as the 
Roman Catholic church may truly be re- 
garded as deriving its impetus from the gos- 
pels, its form from the Roman Empire, and 
its formulations of doctrine from Greek 
philosophy. The official authority which 



8 The New Orthodoxy 



characterizes it is inevitably of the quality 
of the system on which it was patterned. 
This type of Christianity was arrested in 
its progress by the Protestant Reformation 
of the sixteenth century. Its fate is sealed 
with the death knell of monarchy and 
bureaucracy in all social relations — in the 
family, in education, and in industry. It 
has produced many beautiful souls. It has 
adorned our human world with marvelous 
cathedrals and pageants. It has lifted the 
imagination of millions from sordid and 
transient things to pure and lofty visions 
of faith. But it is not the form of religion 
for the modern man. 

What then of Protestantism? It has 
now had four centuries of history. The 
celebration of the four hundredth anniver- 
sary of Luther's break with the Catholic 
church has been widely observed. He in- 
troduced great reforms which continue to 
exert a powerful influence. He gave the 
Bible to the people and made Christianity 
the religion of a book as it had never been 
before. He struck at the sharp separation 



Its Attitudes 



9 



of the sacred and the secular by opposing 
the celibacy of the clergy, by recognizing 
the state as an agency of God, and by dig- 
nifying common labor as having religious 
value. But the movement which he in- 
augurated became dogmatic and fixed and 
has not fulfilled his hopes. In Calvinism 
the doctrinal interest predominated and 
gave rise to creeds and confessions of faith 
which stand in the background of most of 
the evangelical churches today. Puritan- 
ism became austere and antagonistic to 
many natural and vital interests. It de- 
veloped strength of conscience and deter- 
mination of will, but lost breadth and the 
social graces and appreciation of the fine 
arts. Under all its differences Protestant- 
ism retained certain elements of Catholi- 
cism. It distrusted human nature; it 
emphasized the sacraments as essential 
means of grace; it clung to external author- 
ity, to the doctrines of the supernatural, 
and to a miraculous conversion of the 
natural human being in order to make 
him truly religious. 



io The New Orthodoxy 



It is not impossible that future historians 
will regard Protestantism as coming to its 
close with the end of the nineteenth cen- 
tury as a vital, ascending type of religion. 
In that century several of the most charac- 
teristic principles of Protestantism were 
undermined by a larger knowledge of his- 
tory and science. Protestantism was in- 
dividualistic; the new order is social. It 
assumed the infallibility of the Bible, and 
that is no longer tenable. It exalted au- 
thority, and now there is no legitimate 
authority except that of experience. It 
denied that man is naturally religious, 
while it is commonly accepted today that 
man is incurably religious. We may well 
believe therefore that Christianity is enter- 
ing upon a fourth great epoch, which has 
already been called by various names. It 
is referred to as the religion of the spirit, as 
social Christianity, and as the religion of 
democracy. 

There is real need at the present time for 
statements of this latest form of Christian- 
ity created by the profound influences 



Its Attitudes n 

working through many agencies toward a 
richer life for all classes of men. What is 
this religion of the twentieth century? 
How shall we set forth the religious life as 
it appears in the light of the discoveries of 
the historians of religion, biblical students, 
natural scientists, and social psychologists ? 
Let us think of ourselves as perfectly free 
souls, unawed by any authority over us or 
by any superstition within us, yet reverent 
toward the things which experience has 
taught us and eagerly in quest of clearer 
perceptions of the ideal possibilities of life. 
How does the religious lif e appear ? How 
shall we understand its attitudes, its dra- 
matis personae, its growing Bible, its 
changing goal, and its new drama of the 
spiritual life? Some persons have diffi- 
culty in thinking of the Christian life in 
this way, but no apologies are necessary for 
identifying it with the religious life at its 
best. Indeed, the Christian life may be 
regarded as just life itself at its best. It is 
not in exclusive opposition to plain good- 
ness or to life as symbolized by Plato, or 



12 The New Orthodoxy 



Buddha, or Confucius. In our culture the 
highest religion is Christianity. It stands 
for the best in our civilization. Nothing 
is too good to be called Christian, and it is 
difficult to conceive of any good thing 
appearing in our experience which is fun- 
damentally alien to the Christian way of 
life. 

The attitudes treated here are those 
toward lif e as it unfolds naturally in simple 
human relations, those involved in our 
social complexes, and those which relate 
to our efforts to contribute to the fulness 
and beauty of the life of the world. These 
may be called the attitudes of reverence, of 
love, and of faith. These seem to be de- 
manded by life as we experience it in the 
light of science and of the most ideal attain- 
ments. And these qualities are illustrated 
in the life of Jesus. The Christianity of 
our time begins with its own direct sense 
of values, finds them in life as it is, and 
estimates them on their own merit. When 
it discovers that Jesus viewed the world in 
the same way, it sees in him a companion- 



Its Attitudes 



13 



able spirit and a helper in the task of noble 
living. 

First, then, reverence for life. We have 
come to have profound respect for the laws 
of nature, for the way she works, and for 
the possibility of co-operating with her. 
It is the scientific habit of mind to sit down 
quietly and observe the facts, to view 
patiently the processes in the growth of 
plants and animals and in the development 
of society in order to understand them and 
control them. Nothing is allowed to come 
between the scientist and the facts. Jesus 
took the same unprejudiced, impartial atti- 
tude when he said to his disciples, "Ye shall 
know the truth and the truth shall make 
you free." The order and connection of 
things in the inner life were to him no less 
real than the relations which exist in the 
outer world. "Do men gather grapes of 
thorns or figs of thistles? A good tree 
cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a 
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.' ' It 
was this appeal to life itself which enabled 
the people to understand him so readily 

j 
! 



14 The New Orthodoxy 



and to appreciate the moral lessons which 
he drew from their common occupations 
and daily experiences. He did not shrink 
from life. He came eating and drinking 
and entered into the natural and simple in- 
terests of his townsmen and friends. His 
moral precepts were largely direct observa- 
tions of what he saw going on about him. 
"Judge not that ye be not judged, for with 
what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
judged, and with what measure ye mete, it 
shall be measured to you again." In those 
words he was simply telling what he had 
observed and what any of us may observe 
every day. It was the same when he said, 
"Ask and it shall be given you; seek and 
ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened 
unto you." He probably had in mind 
some undaunted souls who persistently 
kept after worthy objects and finally ob- 
tained them against heavy odds. Jesus 
appears very near to us because he is so 
real and straightforward in his estimates. 
He has precisely the attitude of a modern 
man who looks over the pictures of life in 



Its Attitudes 



the newspapers or at the movies and rec- 
ognizes the folly of the fool and the wisdom 
of the wise. Generosity begets generosity, 
hardness invites hardness. They that take 
the sword shall perish by the sword. 

He may be said to have confidence in his 
teaching just because so little of it is his 
own in any exclusive sense. The message 
which he gives is in no sense private. It 
is the declaration of things which are right 
at hand but which are overlooked and 
neglected. In this sense there is a certain 
identity between the teaching of Jesus and 
what is called paganism. The authority 
for what he teaches is found in the nature 
of the experience itself and may be verified 
by anyone. Even paganism in the sense 
of the joy of life, the delight in friendship 
and in nature and in humor and in the free 
play of the imagination, is not wanting. 
The great parables — the Prodigal Son, the 
Good Samaritan, the Wise and Foolish 
Virgins, the Sower and the Husbandman — 
are straight out of life and have traveled 
around the world for two thousand years 



16 The New Orthodoxy 



as true counterparts of actual conditions 
in the lives of the people. It did not re- 
quire a special revelation to make them 
true. They would have been just as true 
from any other lips. Because he saw 
people as they are, with their ideals as well 
as their sins, and pictured them to them- 
selves with such fidelity, he has won their 
hearts and inspired their wills. 

Religion is for him the maintenance of 
this attitude of respect for life. The divine 
order is not different in principle from that 
which we constantly observe. God is like 
a good shepherd seeking his lost sheep. He 
is like the father receiving back his prodigal 
son. The analogies of seedtime and har- 
vest hold in the moral realm. Whoever, 
then, in our day has this reverence for life, 
respects its simple principles of industry, of 
generosity, of persistence, and of fidelity, 
possesses in this respect the Christian atti- 
tude and is to that extent and by that very 
fact a Christian. The modern man gains 
a new attachment for Jesus in this dis- 
covery, for there is here no longer the sense 



Its Attitudes 



i7 



of something artificial and arbitrary, but a 
common human response to the great spec- 
tacle of the world. In all that wonderful 
panorama some things appear better than 
others. The differences are as clear to the 
plain man as to the prophet when once they 
are pointed out. It is the function of the 
prophet to call attention to them, and it is 
the measure of his greatness that he is able 
to do so in such vivid pictures that men 
remember and have their wills stirred to 
act accordingly. 

The great moral distinctions between 
good and bad, right and wrong, have arisen 
out of the long and tortuous experience of 
the race. Like language and art they have 
been fashioned first in the give and take of 
use and wont. Later they have been for- 
mulated and codified by prophets and 
social leaders. The conviction which a 
moral leader awakens is not due to what 
he brings with him so much as to the dis- 
closures he makes concerning the habits 
which men already employ. He deals in 
typical cases: "A certain man had two 



1 8 The New Orthodoxy 



sons"; or "There was a certain rich man 
which had a steward"; or "What man of 
you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one 
. . . ." In the time and country of Jesus 
every man worth taking into account had 
at least two sons, every rich man naturally 
had a steward, and every farmer of any 
significance had at least a hundred sheep. 
The stories therefore had point and could 
be verified with little difficulty. They de- 
rived their significance not from the man 
who told them but from life itself. His 
glory was in his clear and illuminating in- 
sight which became so revealing and so 
convincing the moment men compared 
what he said with what they saw all about 
them. He is vital for us now because he 
lodged the authority of his word in what he 
saw, in what all experienced, and in the dis- 
tinctions which had been made before him 
but which needed reinforcement through 
such an energizing and convincing soul as 
his. He accepted the Ten Command- 
ments, but he knew they were not all of 
equal importance and he did not hesitate 



Its Attitudes 



19 



even in the presence of the formal teachers 
of the Law to assert which was the greatest 
and to put another beside it as of equal 
value. The attitude of Christ toward life 
was then one of reverence for its moral 
distinctions and its ethical values. We 
share that attitude with him. We also 
look to life for its meaning and for direc- 
tion, and because we agree in this reverence 
for life we are to this extent Christian. 

The second conspicuous attitude of the 
Christian life which I mention is love, espe- 
cially love of our fellow-men. We are hav- 
ing a great awakening in recent years with 
reference to social justice. This is the 
phrase which we have adopted to express 
the development in institutions, and par- 
ticularly in the state, of the attitude of con- 
sideration of our fellow-men. There never 
was such care of children or so much insur- 
ance of different kinds for all classes. The 
ingenuity and skill of modern science has 
been drafted into the service of health 
and longevity. The energies of educators, 
statesmen, and artists have been enlisted 



20 The New Orthodoxy 



in the quest for the efficiency and happiness 
of the common people. A new determina- 
tion has grown into religious fervor to safe- 
guard and enrich human life everywhere. 
A corresponding conscience has appeared 
concerning the evils which afflict the race — 
poverty, disease, ignorance, prostitution, 
intemperance, and war. Never has there 
been such effective opposition to war. Its 
waste and suffering, its profound and tragic 
destructiveness, never have been so little 
relieved by illusions of romance or ag- 
grandizement. The motives which once 
sustained it are losing their appeal. A 
constructive, universal humanitarianism is 
emerging. Men do not wait to find that 
love of their fellows is a supreme ideal of 
Christianity before they follow it. The 
impressive fact is that they believe them- 
selves to have found a principle which rests 
directly upon experience, one which carries 
its own justification in itself. And they 
are right. But it is identical with the feel- 
ing which Jesus had for his fellows just the 
same. 



Its Attitudes 



21 



The business man adopts better methods 
for the protection of his employees. He 
may have mixed motives about it, but one 
very real factor is his sense of friendliness 
for those who work with him and who are 
therefore neighbors to him. At least one 
of the discoveries made by agencies for the 
promotion of the welfare of employees is 
the genuine human interest taken by the 
employers when they understand the facts. 
Their attention has too often been cen- 
tered upon other things in the conduct of 
business, but when they come into closer 
human relations with the men they are 
more and more ready to improve working 
conditions. Neighborliness is in reality 
dependent upon something more than 
physical proximity, as we who dwell in city 
apartments well understand. It is more 
than a formal connection with the machin- 
ery and the pay-roll of a firm. It is a 
question of fellow-feeling, of sympathetic 
imagination. It is a sense of having our 
interests intimately bound up together. It 
is a realization of comradeship in a common 



22 The New Orthodoxy 



cause. Neighbors are not really neighbors 
until their children play and quarrel to- 
gether, or until they confer about paving 
the alley, or until they are visited by com- 
mon bereavement, or their sons go to war. 
When these things happen, then love arises 
between them; that is, good feeling, kindli- 
ness, mutual concern, spring up naturally 
and of course. The great improvements 
in social adjustments are now being 
brought about by using this simple fact. 
In order to preserve our cities from im- 
pending isolation of individuals in a great 
maze of inhuman solid pavements and 
brick walls, we have created parks and 
playgrounds where the natural impulses to 
play and to social contact may find satis- 
faction. 

Nothing has helped more to create the 
religious virtue of love to our fellow-men 
in the cities than these places of associa- 
tion. Formerly we left the development 
of this Christian quality too much to the 
saloon and the public dance hall ! It is one 
of the most significant forward steps in our 



Its Attitudes 



23 



society that we have begun to find out how- 
to create the normal and natural conditions 
out of which the highest moral qualities can 
most successfully be produced. We have 
always believed, theoretically at least, that 
men should love each other, and we knew 
that under certain conditions they always 
did love each other, but we have only re- 
cently put these two things together and 
begun to create vast plans for the condi- 
tions under which a wider and firmer affec- 
tion may spontaneously develop. Settle- 
ment workers, friendly visitors for the 
united charities, comrades in barracks and 
in the trenches, as well as classmates in col- 
lege and members of the family, have found 
that the old injunction to love your neigh- 
bor means, when translated into experi- 
ence, to live together, to share hardship 
and pleasure, storms and sunshine, tears 
and laughter, poverty and prosperity. It 
has been said that all face-to-face groups 
are naturally Christian. This conviction 
impels us to the conclusion, therefore, that 
what is needed is to bring the world face 



24 The New Orthodoxy 



to face, and that is being accomplished in 
our time in unexpected ways. Travel and 
communication and the movies and other 
devices enable even the plainest citizen to 
enter into intimate understanding with 
classes and conditions which have hitherto 
been inaccessible to him. It is because 
this attitude of love which is central in the 
Christian conception is spontaneous and 
inevitable in life itself that it is not to be 
regarded as a fantastic dream that the 
world may continue increasingly to find 
itself and to call itself Christian. 

The third attitude of the religious life is 
faith. Faith is that quality by which 
pioneers like Abraham and the Klondike 
adventurers go forth into new countries. 
It was the attitude of Columbus. It is the 
forward-striving, hopeful, expectant qual- 
ity. To have faith means to be willing to 
take some risk for a cause. It is of the 
essence of business enterprise and of the 
creative spirit in science and in art. Reli- 
gious faith means to have that feeling 
about life as a whole. No one is able to 



Its Attitudes 



25 



prove conclusively that human progress 
will continue, but no man can get the most 
out of life who refuses to believe in progress 
and in the possibility of improving the 
world. In spite of all the lions in the way 
we must go on. In spite of human frailties 
and weaknesses, in spite of follies and irra- 
tionalities, in spite of selfishness and greed, 
in spite of false ideals and paralyzing in- 
difference, we must go on with our task 
whether it is our business, our science, our 
politics, or our religion. They are all of a 
piece in this respect. Everywhere we work 
against difficulties and in the face of dis- 
couragements which would be heartbreak- 
ing if we thought only of them. But 
everywhere we keep hoping and fighting 
and believing that improvement is to be 
made. When we give up that faith, we are 
done with life, or at least with that par- 
ticular part of it concerning which we have 
lost faith. 

This, too, is a natural attitude which has 
come to have a new appraisement. The 
cults of cheerfulness which have sprung up 



26 The New Orthodoxy 



on every hand witness to the response 
which this quality gains wherever it ap- 
pears. That is one great factor in the 
irresistible charm of youth. In its normal 
state it is buoyant, believing, and un- 
daunted. Here again it has been dis- 
covered that this spiritual quality of life 
has relation to practical and to physical 
conditions. As between a healthy man 
and an invalid, the healthy man will 
usually have the most faith and courage 
for the future. Therefore every means of 
banishing disease from the world may be 
regarded as a means of increasing our faith. 
Poverty and ignorance also depress and 
tend to break the spirit and contract the 
soul. Remunerative occupation and bet- 
ter education of the mind therefore become 
factors in the spiritual life. 

But it is also true that faith is conta- 
gious. You must know that from the way 
in which salesmen and promoters commu- 
nicate to you their enthusiasm for their 
goods and stocks. It is true, too, with ref- 
ference to the ideal things of religion. It 



Its Attitudes 



27 



is heartening to meet great souls like Jesus 
and Paul and Luther and Bishop Brooks, 
who are resilient and full of faith in the 
progress of the kingdom of love in the 
world. They look over the long distances 
which the race has traveled and are able to 
see savagery pass away and barbarism dis- 
appear, the old nomadic life of Israel give 
place to the kingdom, the old superstitions 
of magic and sorcery vanish before increas- 
ing intelligence, old cruelty surrender to 
kindliness, and the littleness of broken and 
scattered societies grow into the beauty 
and power of ordered states and empires. 
The Christian attitude of faith is that the 
world has immense possibilities and that 
these may be realized through the industry, 
intelligence, and good-will of men working 
in harmony with the highest knowledge 
and deepest convictions they possess. 

These, then, are the attitudes of the reli- 
gious life. Reverence for life and for the 
moral distinctions which commend them- 
selves to the experience of the race; love 
for our fellow-men as the natural attitude 



28 The New Orthodoxy 



of good- will and comradeship which arises 
wherever men really know and understand 
each other; and the forward-moving action 
of life in the quest for better things than 
have yet been achieved — these are the atti- 
tudes of the Christian life, and they are 
the attitudes of life itself at its best. Is it 
too much to hope that one day this identity 
will be fully realized and that then it will 
be seen that wherever reverence and love 
and faith abound there also the Christian 
life has come to its own? It is in this 
spirit that men are gaining a new appre- 
ciation of religion and a new and truer 
vision of Jesus Christ. Instead of being 
dwarfed by the world's realization that his 
religion is the religion of life at its best, 
that discovery exalts him into a more 
intimate and persuasive leadership which 
invites new enthusiasm and devotion. 



CHAPTER II 



THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
DRAMATIS PERSONAE 

Religion as we know it in our society is 
concerned with persons. This is a distin- 
guishing feature. In the earlier stages of 
man's groping life he attached more im- 
portance to what are for us mere animals 
and material objects than he did to human 
beings. His ceremonials centered in the 
things around him. Often it was his food. 
At times it was a mountain or a stream. 
His deities were rice or maize, sheep or kan- 
garoos, or any other objects acutely con- 
nected with his wants and his satisfactions. 
For long ages he cherished such things more 
than he did his own human kind. It is still 
true in some countries that animals are 
treated with more consideration than men 
and especially than women. Sometimes 
our western civilization is accused of valu- 
ing its machines higher than the lives of the 
29 



30 The New Orthodoxy 



men who run them. But in spite of all 
exceptions and of all failures to live up to 
it, the motto everywhere displayed is 
"safety first" for human beings. We are 
rapidly making this devotion to human 
welfare religious. It is only recently that 
negro slavery was abolished, and now agi- 
tation grows against the slavery of women, 
wage-slavery, and all forms of the subordi- 
nation of men, women, or children to un- 
just or merely impersonal interests. Not 
only must they be freed from various kinds 
of bondage, but movements are under way 
to give them the resources of a larger 
human existence by means of education, 
better economic conditions, and larger 
opportunities for recreation, social con- 
tact, and genuine freedom. 

The conservation of the race has come to 
be recognized as more important than the 
conservation of timber and minerals. This 
is no longer merely a sentiment, but it is 
embodied in laws and institutions. Not 
only do men exist for the state, but the state 
exists for men. At last man's understand- 



Its Dramatis Personae 



3i 



ing of himself has become clear enough for 
him to see that his highest duty is toward 
his own kind, and that unless the life of 
man himself is becoming larger and finer 
nothing else can yield enduring satisfac- 
tion. This is the meaning of the wars for 
freedom and for conscience. The heroes of 
liberty and democracy have thought of 
nothing as comparable in importance with 
the nurture and enrichment of the spirit of 
man. 

This love of man toward man is cher- 
ished for no other reason than that it seems 
the only natural and human attitude. It 
yields its own rewards. As a father scorns 
the thought that his love for his son needs 
any command to stimulate it or any hope 
of reward to keep it alive, so thousands who 
have caught the social vision of our time 
labor for better laws, better schools, better 
recreations without waiting for a text of 
Scripture to tell them that this is their duty 
and without expecting any other compen- 
sation than just that of seeing these results 
accomplished. Gradually it is becoming 



32 The New Orthodoxy 



apparent that this was precisely the atti- 
tude which dominated the mind and will of 
Jesus. Therefore leaders of social, humani- 
tarian reforms find themselves in full ac- 
cord with his spirit and ideals. They have 
come to have the same interest in building 
a society that shall minister to the deepest 
human wants. Often they have found this 
ideal by direct dealings with human needs, 
much as he himself found it. Therefore 
a new sense of comradeship is springing up 
between them and him, for they are fellow- 
workers in the same great cause. It is not 
necessary to decide whether Jesus was the 
first to have this attitude. Nor is it vital 
to know just how far he is responsible for 
this feeling wherever it appears at the 
present time. We have come to know it 
as the Christian view of life, and we think 
of it as Christlike no matter in whom it is 
manifest. The religious life therefore in- 
volves one's own personality, the person- 
ality of others, and of God. These are the 
dramatis personae. In a history of reli- 
gion it would be necessary to take account 



Its Dramatis Personae 



33 



of angels and demons, demigods and in- 
numerable tribal deities. Here it is suffi- 
cient to interpret the self and other souls, 
including Jesus Christ, the church, and 
God. These are as intimately related to 
one another as the members of a family. 
Each must be seen in relation to the rest. 
No one of them liveth unto himself. 

Self is the word now more commonly 
used than soul or spirit. It is the mind as 
it knows itself. When one says "I" or 
"me" or refers to himself byname, he des- 
ignates the self. The description of one's 
own personality is peculiarly difficult, but 
the sense of it is most intimate and vital. 
The psychologists have made great efforts 
to make it clear, but with all their training 
and practice they have not satisfied them- 
selves. Professor James made a notable 
contribution to the description and under- 
standing of the self, and all writers upon the 
subject go back to him for help. He cites 
the case of Peter and Paul, who talk over 
the events of the day just before they fall 
asleep. Each understands the other and 



34 The New Orthodoxy 



each enters into the other's moods. They 
keep their own selves distinct, however. 
No confusion occurs between them when 
they wake in the morning. Each takes up 
his own train of ideas and connects with the 
events of the previous day without uncer- 
tainty as to whether he is recalling his own 
or the other's feelings. The basis of this 
recognition of his own state and of him- 
self is in each case just the peculiar 
" warmth and intimacy" which one feels 
for some ideas or actions and not for 
others. Out of the stream of the conver- 
sation of the night before some attitudes 
and emotions are recalled which are wel- 
comed at once as belonging to one's own 
inner world. In contrast to them the atti- 
tudes and emotions of the other person are 
more remote, colder, and carry no sense 
of possession. 

The self is the being any man experiences 
himself to be. He is known to himself 
immediately in the sense of being at home 
with his thoughts and feelings. His own 
moods and memories are more familiar, 



Its Dramatis Personae 



35 



more urgent and alive. The self may un- 
dergo sudden and extreme changes and yet 
retain the feeling of being the same person. 
The changes are just as real as the same- 
ness. We are actually different from mood 
to mood. It is astonishing how profoundly 
the sense of ourselves may be affected by a 
cup of coffee, a breath of fresh air suddenly 
let into a stuffy room, a refreshing night's 
sleep, success at a favorite game. 

When I fall in with a stranger in a rail- 
way coach, it is this actual self which is dis- 
closed to him. He begins by remarking 
that the weather is unusual for the time of 
year. I give him a courteous but general 
reply. He then refers to the football score 
of the previous day, and I am all anima- 
tion, volunteering remarks about a certain 
team whose players I know and whose 
records are forthwith reviewed. Later the 
evening paper is thrust before us by the 
newsboy, and the headlines are appeals 
met by varying degrees of zest and atten- 
tion. If we journey far and become com- 
municative, we thus become aware of the 



36 The New Orthodoxy 



nature of the self possessed by each one. 
His self is that of a traveling salesman deal- 
ing in rubber. He is well developed with 
reference to automobile tires, rubber boots, 
water hose, their uses, prices, and possible 
substitutes. Socialism is his political 
creed. His heart is wrapped up in a ten- 
year-old daughter whose studies and play 
and pets have forced him to attend to a 
new world of things essential to the life of a 
little girl. The conversation reveals by 
many allusions and exclamations, stories 
and passing references, the outline of his 
inner world. I remark afterward that I 
became acquainted with Mr. Smith during 
that journey. It is literally true. His 
personality stood forth in his very vocabu- 
lary and gestures. At some questions of 
mine he would return quick answers with 
eagerness, while to others he would merely 
say indifferently that he did not know. 
Occasionally, as when he mentioned his 
little girl, one could observe an almost 
tragic tension, as if his very heart rose and 
beat in his words with anxiety and tense 



Its Dramatis Personae 



37 



affection. He followed none of my hints 
about Schopenhauer or chess or South 
America, knew nothing of Bret Harte, and 
cared nothing for Airedale dogs. It was 
not difficult to see that his self was highly 
developed on the side of business and dis- 
closed depths of fatherly pride in his 
daughter, but was quite lacking in appre- 
ciation of poetry and conventional religion. 

It is in some such way that the practical 
person, whether he be scholar or man of 
affairs, understands the self. He knows it 
best of all in his own experience. He un- 
derstands what it is to be perplexed and 
depressed over his mistakes and misfor- 
tunes, and also what it is to be elated over 
success. If religion could talk to him in 
terms of those experiences, he could under- 
stand it. It is this self which has to be 
reckoned with first of all. Whether reli- 
gion is vital depends on whether it is a 
warm and powerful interest to this self 
which is also concerned with business and 
home and pleasure. The measure of a 
man's interest in religion may be truly seen 



38 The New Orthodoxy 



in the time and thought he gives to it, in 
the response he makes to it in conversa- 
tion, in the courage and patience with 
which he seeks to understand it in his read- 
ing and reflection. 

Jesus realized that when men are most 
serious and honest with themselves they 
count their ideal moral interests of the 
greatest importance. When it comes to a 
test, all realize that " a man's life consisteth 
not in the abundance of the things which 
he possesseth." If it is a conflict between 
one's comfort and one's honor, the average 
man knows at once how to choose. Few 
men will betray their country for bribes. 
There is a recognized hierarchy of values 
which puts material goods on the lowest 
and spiritual things on the highest plane. 
When forced to choose, men do not fear 
those who can merely destroy the body, but 
fear rather those who strike at liberty and 
justice. There is consequently urgent 
meaning in the question, "What shall it 
profit a man if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul" — his larger and 



Its Dramatis Personae 



39 



nobler self? Religion magnifies this better 
self for which men are willing to sacrifice 
everything else. 

One of the characteristics of this self is 
that it has no independent being but is 
intimately and organically bound up with 
others. It is a common observation that 
a single child in a home is at a very real 
disadvantage as compared with one who 
has brothers and sisters. The conditions 
for growth of personality lie in the give and 
take of the interaction of many individuals. 
If a human infant could be kept alive and 
brought to years of maturity without con- 
tact with other human beings, it is difficult 
to imagine how pitiful and inhuman his 
state would be. He would be without 
language and would have few, if any, of 
the abilities which set man apart from the 
lower animals. A distinctively human self 
would be lacking in him. By the same 
principle the more vital relations a person 
has with the developed human world the 
larger self or personality he gains. There- 
fore other friendly persons are indispensable 



40 The New Orthodoxy 



conditions of the religious life. They con- 
stitute the family group within which one 
is nourished, protected, and fashioned. 
In its early days the church was sometimes 
identical with a household. It is not an 
accident that the terms denoting the do- 
mestic life hold over into the larger body. 
The members of the church have the same 
intimate feeling for each other. They call 
themselves brothers and sisters. They 
exercise brotherly care and affection and 
discipline. Misunderstandings of the na- 
ture and function of the church would often 
be avoided if it were more commonly 
thought of in terms of this natural family 
relation. It would be seen to be less formal 
and more intimate, nearer and more pliable 
in its action upon its members. This en- 
compassing body becomes a kind of corpo- 
rate personality. One feels loyalty toward 
it and protects its good name. Through a 
sense of participation in its larger, more 
stable life the individual comes to con- 
sciousness of himself and of it. The church 
was in early Christian society, and in its 



Its Dramatis Personae 



4i 



less formal types is today, more nearly 
what the old clan group was to its mem- 
bers — an intimate association, sustaining 
and controlling them without the narrow- 
ness and antagonism of the circumscribed 
clan. Every interest of the local church 
tends to carry the intimacy and affection of 
its inner life out to the larger invisible 
church universal of which it feels itself a 
part. In the literature of the early Chris- 
tians that tendency was marked. The ref- 
erences to the grace of hospitality are fre- 
quent. When they traveled into distant 
cities they were often cared for in the 
homes of their comrades in the faith to 
whom they were otherwise entire strangers. 

The church became to the apostle Paul 
one organic body, mystical and spiritual, 
yet real, within which the individual felt 
himself upborne and nurtured. So vivid 
was this wholeness and spiritual unity for 
him that he thought of it as one being, a 
person, the bride of Christ. For her de- 
vout sons the church is a great life running 
through the centuries, constituted of all 



42 The New Orthodoxy 



those who have participated in her faith 
and work. In her are included all the 
noble company of the apostles, heroes, 
martyrs, and saints who have shared in 
her labors and hopes. They merge into 
her growing soul and form that vast com- 
munion in whose fellowship the Christian 
renews his sense of the reality of the King- 
dom of Heaven. 

Often, in the past, the church has seemed 
to stand in sharp contrast to other institu- 
tions. For many centuries Christianity 
awakened the scorn and then the fear and 
opposition of the older order. To the 
Christians the governments, the armies, 
the wealth, and most of the comforts of life 
appeared to belong, not to them, but to the 
world. Christianity became a thing apart 
and remains so in its inner feeling and atti- 
tude to this day among the vast majority 
of its followers. They do not yet really 
believe that it is possible for a man to be 
both a citizen of this world and a citizen 
of the heavenly kingdom without incon- 
sistency and tragic conflict. In spite of 



Its Dramatis Personae 



43 



her victory over the temporal powers, 
the Catholic church never came to the 
point where she could trust herself to live 
in the world. To this day she remains 
apart, celibate and otherworldly, mystical 
and ascetic, through the conviction that 
the life of the spirit is fundamentally in- 
compatible with the natural order. All 
other Christian bodies have been deeply 
infected with that despair of this world. 
Therefore there yet remains over against 
the traditional Christian the traditional 
worldling. This worldling is one of the 
dramatis personae. He is a less lively 
figure in the imagination now than in the 
past, though he still gives color and con- 
trast to the fading picture. He is gaily 
dressed. He employs the arts, is convivial 
and human. He was as repugnant to the 
puritan as to the old ascetic. In modern 
religion he isn't so bad. If he is merely 
a pleasure-seeker, without serious purpose, 
he falls under the judgment that he is use- 
ful neither to himself nor to society. His 
way of living carries its own condemnation, 



44 The New Orthodoxy 



for it does not yield the solid satisfactions 
of larger participation in the affairs of the 
community. 

We are finding out, however, new uses 
for leisure, for art, for play, and for wealth. 
Here we are in deeper accord with Jesus 
than with his mediaeval or puritanical fol- 
lowers. He moved in the midst of the 
stream of human life, amused and stirred 
as well as angered and amazed that men 
should be so blind and wasteful of their 
opportunities. The traditional contrast 
between the saints and the sinners, be- 
tween the saved and the lost, does not hold 
in its f amiliar form. Those terms belonged 
to a static and fixed system in which it was 
thought one must be either all of one or all 
of the other. As a matter of fact, the 
Christian life is a growth, and those who 
participate in it are not altogether perfect, 
nor are those who do not profess it alto- 
gether bad. There is much that is bad in 
the best of us, and there is a great deal of 
good in the worst of us. Some people in 
the churches have tendencies which, if un- 



Its Dramatis Personae 



45 



checked, would take them to the peniten- 
tiary, while some convicts in prisons would 
probably make good mayors of cities or 
good editors of newspapers. The prison 
walls are not coterminous with the bounds 
of sin and virtue, nor are the walls of the 
churches the sharp dividing line. Human 
life is mixed in all men. That which en- 
titles one to be called a good man is not 
perfection but fairly reliable desires and 
habits for doing the right thing, and that 
which classifies one as bad is his perverse 
desires and habits, which tend to get him 
into trouble and to lead to defeat. In such 
a state society cannot be perfect either. 
Like the individuals in it, it is mixed, and 
may be considered good or bad in terms 
of its tendencies and its fruits. 

Three of the most important of the 
dramatis personae remain for considera- 
tion. Usually they are referred to as the 
three persons of the Trinity, the meaning 
of which word has never been made clear. 
The doctrines of the Trinity have little 
significance in our time. They are not 



46 The New Orthodoxy 



demanded by our moral life and they are not 
taught by the Scriptures. Therefore they 
may be allowed to pass with the intellec- 
tual world to which they belonged. If it 
were necessary to treat of Jesus in relation 
to the Trinity the modern theologian 
would have little to say except what con- 
cerns the history of that conception. For 
himself it has little meaning. But of Jesus 
there is much to say. The impression of 
his life is so natural and convincing in the 
New Testament that there is little force in 
the contention that he never lived. Even 
the stories relating to his birth and his 
death are such as might easily have grown 
up among his followers in that age without 
any intention to deceive or misread the 
facts. Those stories are the expression of 
the boundless love and admiration of men 
who believed him utterly divine. They are 
the record of the wonder-love of the human 
heart, which continues to make legend- 
ary narratives about very human men. 
It has happened to Abraham Lincoln, 
who lived in the full light of a scien- 



Its Dramatis Personae 



47 



tific era and died little more than a half- 
century ago. The figure of Jesus as a 
moral teacher and as a courageous freeman 
against the background of hard conven- 
tion and narrow prejudice is becoming 
more distinct and more moving. There is 
no doubt that fine souls have been turned 
from him by the artificial and preposterous 
claims of many of his followers. But now 
that it is possible to understand him more 
directly and to assess his mind and mes- 
sage more adequately, he is gaining a new 
hold upon the will and the affection of all 
classes. If it were only the educated 
classes who were discovering the power of 
his personality, it would not be so signifi- 
cant, but there are signs that the masses of 
men are coming to realize better how near 
he is to them and how sincerely he speaks 
to the heart of the common people. His 
words remain unique and vital in religion 
as those of Shakespeare do in literature 
or of Plato in philosophy. He moves to 
the heart of moral issues with the sure, 
swift insight of clear thought and of pure 



48 The New Orthodoxy 



impulse. He speaks out of life and by 
constant reference to it almost like an 
empirical scientist of today. This funda- 
mental note is so clear that it becomes a 
touchstone in connection with scholarly 
studies for deciding the genuineness of 
doubtful passages. Nor is it difficult to be- 
lieve that this urgent religious enthusiasm 
for moral ideals will keep him supreme 
among the religious leaders through the 
ages. He will continue to be the living 
companion of those who come to know 
him, and the charm of his personality will 
continue to radiate itself through the 
world. 

The Holy Spirit in the history of the 
church came into prominence after the 
death of Jesus. He was the Comforter who 
arose in the thought of the early disciples 
when they were bereft. He was an unseen 
presence felt whenever they came together 
and opened their hearts to one another. 
To him they attributed the words which 
they spoke in moments of peril before 
judges and accusers or at times of elation 



Its Dramatis Personae 49 



in the assembly of the church. It is not 
impossible to identify the experience out of 
which this personality arose. It is recog- 
nized in the sense of companionship we 
have felt in the uplif ting moments of great 
gatherings or when moved by an over- 
mastering impulse to utter the truth as we 
see it. Colonel Francis Younghusband, of 
the English expeditionary forces to Tibet, 
tells of his experience when wounded and 
ill in the hospital in Llhassa. He felt 
borne up by the physicians and the nurses 
and by the atmosphere of sympathy and 
comfort which they created around him. 
The spirit of this group of friends and 
helpers became to him the Holy Spirit. 
He said to a friend, "In those days the 
God who was most real to me was not God 
the Father; nor God the Son; but God the 
Holy Spirit." 

This experience expresses the tendency 
of many discerning souls in their thought 
of God. He is no longer sought outside 
the world in unattainable distances of 
the unknown and unknowable. Nor is he 



50 The New Orthodoxy 



approached primarily through physical na- 
ture. He is found in the associated life of 
men, especially when that association is 
aspiring and productive. Men are at their 
best when striving for fuller life, for more 
adequate knowledge, and a larger measure 
of justice. God is love; the serving, suffer- 
ing, healing love which binds men together 
in nations and kindreds and leagues of 
peace for the common good. Every con- 
structive, fruitful organization of people is 
a means of understanding the divine. It 
is not an accident that we think of great 
social entities as great personalities. Our 
college is our Virgin Mother, to whom we 
address songs and sentiments of genuine 
affection. Our city has a personality, 
photographed and visualized, whenever 
her honor or her ambition is challenged. 
Each state has an individuality and every 
nation is personified through a definite face 
and figure. Is it not just as natural to 
sum up the meaning of the whole of life in 
the person and image of God ? Seemingly 
it is equally inevitable. It appears to be 



Its Dramatis Personae 



the most natural and the simplest way to 
represent to our minds and wills the moral 
values and the spiritual realities of life. 
Our own selves have grown up through 
interaction with other selves both sensible 
and ideal. In our private reflections we 
carry on conversations with people present 
to our imaginations who are none the less 
important and influential with us when 
they are not physically tangible and visible. 
God is the great Ideal Companion. To 
commune with him is to gain new apprecia- 
tions of all that he signifies to us. He is 
then identified with Strength and Wisdom 
and Nobility. To be loyal to him is to 
strive to adhere to all that he means to us. 

To develop the familiar image of a par- 
ent or friend or historical character to the 
point where it serves as the most vivid 
symbol of the divine is doubtless a com- 
mon experience. " The light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ' 9 is the great reality to Christians. 
The warmth and comfort and contentment 
which Christianity affords may be found 



52 The New Orthodoxy 



largely in that fact. In him God comes 
near and takes the form we can grasp and 
utilize. In practical religious life men 
easily feel themselves in the presence of 
God when they recall his face. This is not 
due so much to any theological conviction 
about the doctrine of his divinity as it is 
to long training and practice in associating 
Christ with all that they feel and respect 
as divine. 

These persons of the religious drama 
cannot be separated from each other. 
They are bound up together in an intimacy 
as vital as that which unites the members 
of an organism. No one of them can 
live without the others nor without the 
whole. The self grows through interplay 
with the selves around it. It could not 
exist without them. Over and above the 
particular persons constituting one's class 
or country or world is the feeling of the 
entity of the class or country or world 
itself. Each class in a school possesses an 
individuality to which the members mani- 
fest loyalty and reverence. That indi- 



Its Dramatis Personae 53 



viduality has a certain objectivity and per- 
manence above and beyond any particular 
persons within it. In a sense it transcends 
them. Yet that individuality obviously is 
in and through them. If this be the nature 
of God as the Ideal Socius, then he too has 
at least such reality and objectivity. He 
is the Soul of the world in which all other 
selves live and move and have their being. 



CHAPTER III 



THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
GROWING BIBLE 

One of the striking facts in the religious 
experience of the modern man is that while 
he seems to hold sacred things more lightly 
than did the passing generation, yet in 
reality he cherishes those to which he does 
cling with a more vital faith. He is dis- 
covering that religion does not need to be 
defended and protected in order to preserve 
it in the world. It has a sin-prising depth 
and persistence. The rationalistic mind of 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
which still survives here and there in so- 
cieties and individuals designating them- 
selves as rationalists, assumed that religion 
could not survive criticism. They sup- 
posed that religion was so inextricably 
bound up with superstition and super- 
naturalism that when these were exposed 
and cast aside religion itself would perish. 

54 



Its Growing Bible 



55 



This too has been the conviction of the 
extreme conservatives. They must believe 
the Bible "from cover to cover" or reject 
it all. If they should relax their adherence 
to miracle or prophecy they could not be- 
lieve in the veracity of the teaching. 
There is thus a significant likeness between 
the extremes. They agree that one must 
accept all or nothing. No discrimination 
or qualification is approved. The Bible 
and the Christian religion are to be de- 
fended or rejected in toto. 

The man of the modern mind, trained in 
history and in the social sciences, takes a 
different view. He does not indorse all 
that has been claimed for the Bible nor 
does he take it to be of equal worth in all 
its parts. Yet he finds in it messages of 
greatest value. Even contradictions, dis- 
crepancies, superstitions, and myths may 
be discovered without weakening the force 
of the moral ideals and precepts. Those 
things which are self-evidencing and veri- 
fiable in experience cannot be deprived of 
their validity because of accompanying 



56 The New Orthodoxy 



errors or misconceptions. Religion is at 
last seen to be greater than the traditions 
which have grown up with it. It has 
deeper springs in human nature than have 
been suspected. Instead of being a deli- 
cate and tender growth it proves to be 
hardy and vigorous. Therefore it does not 
have to be sheltered and hidden against 
investigation and criticism. It cannot 
thrive at its best under patronizing influ- 
ences nor at the hands of those who are 
unwilling to trust it to the free play of 
social forces. Certainly many men in our 
time have been surprised to realize how 
much more vital and satisfying their reli- 
gious faith became the moment they began 
to view it with the same freedom and in- 
telligence with which they regard art and 
politics. As with all other big human con- 
cerns, religion is at its best where it is close 
to life, unhindered by authority and open to 
reasonable, sympathetic criticism. Again 
and again in the history of Christianity its 
vital force has broken through old forms 
and doctrines and created new symbols and 



Its Growing Bible 



57 



types of service. The dogma of biblical 
infallibility is one of the artificialities re- 
cently discarded, and the result has been 
the strengthening of religion. 

One of the best correctives for mistaken 
and exaggerated views of any phase of re- 
ligion is the study of its history. When the 
Bible is viewed from the beginning of the 
church through the changing centuries, 
many things concerning it are made plain. 
The word " Bible " gets a new meaning. It 
is no more a single book but a collection of 
books. The proper translation of the 
Greek from which the word "Bible" comes 
is "the books." That fact alone lessens 
the impression of singleness and unity 
which has prevailed. The Bible means a 
collection of writings, a little library of 
sixty-six books. These are all printed 
separately by the American Bible Society 
at one penny each, and it might be an aid 
to the right use of them if they were always 
sold separately rather than being bound 
together in flexible bindings so different 
from other books. It is even an occasion 



S& The New Orthodoxy 



of comment to be seen carrying a copy of 
the Bible on the street, especially on any 
other day than Sunday, because it is still 
felt to be different from other books, and 
those who carry it are looked upon as not 
quite natural and human. 

The fact that the Bible is not one but 
many books is clear from the history of the 
selection of the writings contained in it. 
It is difficult for us to realize that the Bible 
has not always meant just the words 
brought together in our Oxford editions. 
Few people stop to think that the early 
church did not have any of the writings of 
the New Testament until the latter part 
of the first century, and then only in the 
informal and uncompilated form of letters 
and sayings circulated from hand to hand 
and by word of mouth. Yet it is of pro- 
found importance to realize that the church 
is older than its written documents and was 
the cause of them. Naturally today the 
book is regarded as the seed from which 
churches spring, and the common impres- 
sion easily arises that it was always so, but 



Its Growing Bible 



59 



originally the opposite was the case. The 
first disciples had, of course, only the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament, and these 
were in different versions, lacking uni- 
formity as to the number and character of 
the constituent books. It was late in the 
fourth century before a list of the New Tes- 
tament books appeared which is identical 
with our own. Before that time there was 
a very notable variation. The oldest parts 
of our New Testament are the letters of 
Paul. These began to be written about 
twenty years after the death of Jesus. 
They were not prepared for publication, 
much less as permanent documents. They 
were concerned with problems in local 
churches and with the conduct and spirit- 
ual needs of individuals, and were passed 
around among interested friends in much 
the same way as letters today from one on 
a journey. 

Our New Testament contains twenty- 
seven books, but Justin Martyr in the 
middle of the second century mentions only 
thirteen or fourteen. Irenaeus, about 



6o The New Orthodoxy 



185 a.d., speaks of twenty-one. A list 
from about 200 a.d., known as the Mura- 
torian Canon, contains twenty-four, among 
which are the Revelation of Peter and the 
Wisdom of Solomon. The author of this 
list frankly says that some would also in- 
clude other books, and names the Shepherd 
of Hermas, but he would not include them. 
He accepts the Apocalypse of Peter as well 
as the Revelation of John which we have. 
But he does not have the Epistles of Peter, 
nor the third letter of John, nor the Epistle 
of James. Throughout this period and 
until the time of the Reformation there was 
never so much importance attached to the 
inspiration and authority of these writings 
as we are accustomed to ascribe to them. 
When individual Christians sought counsel 
and instruction they went to the church 
itself, to the congregation of believers or 
to the leaders, such as the presbyters or 
bishops. Until the age of Luther the 
church was the recognized source and 
medium of authority. The group itself 
settled its problems and furnished guid- 



Its Growing Bible 61 



ance for its members. The congregations 
clearly held the writings of Scripture in 
high esteem, but they did not regard them 
as the sole nor the supreme means of ascer- 
taining the truth. The spirit of the church 
itself was the real court of appeal. This 
conviction continued into Reformation 
times, and was only obscured by the reac- 
tion against abuses by the hierarchy of the 
Roman church. Martin Luther himself, 
with all his devotion to the Bible, did not 
receive all of the books as of equal value, 
but went so far as to reject the letter of 
James as "an epistle of straw" and the 
Revelation of John as of doubtful right to 
a place in the canon. He did not include 
the Revelation in his version of the Scrip- 
tures but printed it in an appendix with 
Hebrews, James, and Jude. 

Apparently the event which fixed the 
Bible in the form in which we know it was 
the official publication of the King James 
translation, commonly known as the 
Authorized Version. It was the first 
authoritative translation of the whole 



62 The New Orthodoxy 



Bible into any modern vernacular lan- 
guage. It was made by the King's com- 
mand. He was the head of the church in 
England, and it was appointed by him to 
be read in the churches. The reverence 
felt for the Bible was greatly augmented by 
this translation. It gained prestige and 
became of increasing interest to the people. 
It was, however, too expensive to be pur- 
chased generally, and the majority were too 
illiterate to read it. It remained, there- 
fore, in the hands of the clergy to a large 
extent and was known chiefly to the public 
through being read in the services of the 
churches. By the natural tendency al- 
ready fostered through the authority of the 
state and the church and by the importance 
attached to it by the preachers among the 
common people, the book came to be re- 
garded with a feeling of awe and supersti- 
tious devotion. Perhaps it was the work 
of the British and other Bible societies 
which did most to make it accessible and 
at the same time to transform it into a kind 
of popular fetish. Before the organization 



Its Growing Bible 



63 



of these societies the Bible was a luxury 
which few could afford. In the sixteenth 
century, the time of Shakespeare, the Bible 
was so rare as to be possessed only by the 
few, while for the use of those who could 
not buy it a copy was chained to a reading 
desk in the cathedrals where the people 
could have access to it and at the same 
time not be able to steal it. 

The Bible Society changed all this by 
printing the book in vast editions. Gifts 
of charity were secured for its wider circu- 
lation. The response to the appeal of the 
society on behalf of the poor to whom it 
sought to distribute Bibles was greater 
than any appeals for those suffering from 
famine and pestilence. In the middle of 
the nineteenth century the society dis- 
tributed half a million a year and increased 
its output until its presence in the house- 
holds of the common people in civilized 
lands and in countries reached by mis- 
sionaries has become one of the amazing 
phenomena of the age. The faith thus dis- 
played in the power of the Bible without 



64 The New Orthodoxy 



note or comment to transform the world is 
a striking illustration of the miraculous in- 
fluence attributed to it. Along with the 
book went the belief in its complete inspira- 
tion and in its efficacy to convert the souls 
of its humblest readers. We should not 
marvel that it was regarded as a sacred ob- 
ject, whose presence brought safety to the 
home and the daily reading of which 
accumulated merit for the soul. It is 
hardly a mere coincidence that the period 
of its greatest circulation has been the time 
of the deepest and most widespread belief 
in its infallibility and uniqueness. Many 
people still believe that they can at any 
moment receive from it a divine message 
for any perplexity on the first page opened 
at random. 

The fact that this extreme view of the 
supernatural and inf allible character of the 
Bible is so recent and so much the belief of 
the less educated classes should prepare 
us to understand the modern view without 
confusion or distrust. The first step in the 
appreciation of what is meant by the grow- 



Its Growing Bible 



65 



ing Bible is to realize that the conception 
of it as a complete and final revelation is 
exceptional in the history of the church and 
is characteristic of a short period of time 
which is now passing away. The older and 
profounder belief that God has not left 
himself without witness among any people 
and that he has his living prophets in every 
age has found new expression through the 
most authentic spirits of our time. There 
is no need to deny to the first Christian 
century and the writings of the early dis- 
ciples a certain uniqueness and compelling 
directness. They have the quality of the 
first fresh impulse and urgent moral appeal 
of the personal impress of Jesus and Paul 
and their immediate companions. What 
they said and wrote stands apart as the 
record of an epoch distinct from any before 
or after it. Nowhere is it duplicated, nor 
is it likely to be. On this account its canon 
of documents naturally becomes fairly well 
defined. They were the expression of a 
definite personal history and its influence 
upon certain characters and institutions of 



66 The New Orthodoxy 



the time. As that age passed into history 
its outline took shape and remains clear 
among all the epochs of man's spiritual 
struggle. So well marked are its spirit and 
its word that it is possible to determine 
whether newly discovered writings really 
belong to it, and indeed whether specific 
lines and words traditionally embodied in 
the oldest extant manuscripts are genuine 
portions of the Christian message. There 
is some possibility that discoveries are yet 
to be made of letters or gospels purport- 
ing to belong to that message. If such 
should appear, their indicated date and 
authorship would not be so decisive in 
determining their genuineness as would 
their contents and their correspondence 
with that which is already known as 
authentic. 

The problem of establishing the body of 
writings which belong to the church of the 
first century is not radically different from 
that of selecting the great literary products 
of any other well-defined period, such as 
the golden age of Greece or the Elizabethan 



Its Growing Bible 



67 



era of English history. The scholars in 
these fields are conscious of a collection of 
writings just as characteristic, just as or- 
ganic, as the collection which we know as 
the Bible. The latter is the product of the 
religious life of the Hebrew people and its 
full bloom in Christianity. Those records 
and messages which constitute the Scrip- 
tures or writings of that stream of human 
experience are said to be inspired, inspira- 
tion here being equivalent to distinctness 
or separateness. But the fact is usually 
overlooked that the selection of writ- 
ings which are "inspired" was determined 
finally long after the time of their appear- 
ance. This has certainly been true of the 
canon of Scripture. By the same principle 
it might be appropriate to say that certain 
books belong to the canon of Greek litera- 
ture, namely, those which bear the impress 
of the Greek genius as shown by their par- 
ticipation in a certain body of characteris- 
tic ideas and attitudes. These are the only 
works which are truly inspired by that 
genius. They are unique and inimitable. 



68 The New Orthodoxy 



That canon also is closed. It has been 
finished and sealed. 

In similar manner one may regard the 
written records of any age. The Eliza- 
bethan era of English letters embraces a 
definite list of authors, the great names 
of which are Spenser, Shakespeare, and 
Bacon. The lesser lights are Ben Jonson, 
Marlowe, Beaumont, and Fletcher, with 
others like Lodge and Sidney and numer- 
ous anonymous authors making up the 
chorus and background. These all have a 
certain kinship in their problems and out- 
look and general philosophy of life. The 
same is true of the Victorian writers, Ten- 
nyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and 
their lesser kin. Each distinctive time and 
movement has its representative spokes- 
men and prophets. Collections of their 
books are made and preserved and cher- 
ished by their devotees. From the stand- 
point and date of a given epoch its 
literature becomes a closed book. Seldom 
are new authors of importance discovered 
whose works have to be added to the col- 



Its Growing Bible 



69 



lections already extant. But in a larger 
sense and in the longer perspective the 
records accumulate throughout the entire 
unfolding life of the race. The Scriptures 
in this larger sense include the finest prod- 
ucts of the spiritual history of mankind in 
all ages. They are the records of the moral 
and religious aspirations and ideals of all 
humanity. The later stages of this devel- 
opment are not without their influence 
upon the Scriptures of past ages. Those 
Scriptures of the past are, in a very true 
sense, being constantly reinterpreted and 
refashioned, while the new material vastly 
extends and enlarges the entire body of 
literature. Having seen something of the 
gradual formation of the canon of our 
accepted biblical writings and of the pro- 
cess by which it became set off and apothe- 
osized, we may also note the way in which 
it is reinterpreted and made continuous 
with the ampler Scriptures of the whole 
spiritual development of mankind. 

The Bible, like other vital books, grows 
by constant reinterpretation. This may 



70 The New Orthodoxy 



be realized through the experience of any- 
one to whom it is a book of real religious 
value. As one makes the Bible his own by- 
finding in it the passages which appeal to 
him and suit his need, he tends to magnify 
those selections and ignore the rest. Many 
pious souls have for their actual working 
Bible scarcely more than the Twenty-third 
Psalm, the Sermon on the Mount, the four- 
teenth chapter of John, the thirteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians, and the last 
chapters of Revelation. If you judge by 
the interest he displayed in the various 
books, the real Bible of Martin Luther con- 
sisted of the Epistles of Paul, especially 
Galatians and Romans, with the Psalms 
and Genesis. He called the Psalms a 
"short Bible" and Genesis almost the 
noblest book of the Old Testament. 
Luther illustrates, too, the fact that the 
Bible not only is different for different 
people but is different for the same person 
at various times in life. At first he re- 
jected the Revelation of John entirely, but 
later in life it appealed to him more, though 



Its Growing Bible 



never as a book of the first importance. 
Luther made the Old Testament an alle- 
gorical elaboration of the gospel of Christ, 
especially as he found that gospel in the 
letters of Paul. He saw the mysteries of 
the Trinity in the first verses of the first 
chapter of Genesis. Zwingli, another of 
the reformers, unlike Luther, preached the 
New Testament rather than the Old, and 
did not regard PauPs letters as the purest 
gospel. John Calvin, in his turn, made the 
Bible a new book to his generation by a 
radically different type of interpretation. 
It is said that "for the first time in a thou- 
sand years he gave a conspicuous example 
of non-allegorical exposition.' 9 He even 
read the poetry as if it were prose. That 
may have been because he had been trained 
as a lawyer or because he lacked the poetic 
temper. He held the stories of Genesis to 
be literal history. The serpent spoke like 
a human being when Eve was tempted, 
lions lay down with lambs in the ark of 
Noah. His view of Christianity was essen- 
tially imbued with the Old Testament 



72 The New Orthodoxy 



standards. To him the Psalms afforded 
adequate knowledge of salvation and the 
Ten Commandments constituted a suffi- 
cient rule of life. In the sixteenth century 
he adopted the theological doctrines of the 
fourth century and manipulated the texts 
of Scripture to support them. 

We have thus three Bibles, as one might 
say. First that of scholasticism, which 
obscured the original Scriptures by the 
dogmatic theology of the times. Its un- 
derstanding of the Christian religion rested 
upon the teaching of the church fathers, 
with no attempt to get back to the original 
text. A second Bible was that of many of 
the reformers, of whom Luther is typical. 
He went back to the words of the text but 
he employed a highly allegorical interpre- 
tation. Calvin also took the Bible itself 
as the basis of his commentaries and used 
a thoroughly literal method, but still with 
the point of view and the doctrines of the 
fourth century. A third Bible is that of 
those modern scholars since the seven- 
teenth century who employed an unham- 



Its Growing Bible 



73 



pered exegesis in which the Bible for the 
first time was studied in the light of its 
own history and by means of free, unbiased 
investigation. 

Another means of realizing how different 
the Scriptures become under the influence 
of varying presuppositions may be seen in 
the comparison of the impressions which 
different Protestant sects cherish. To one, 
passages concerning foreordination and 
election become the standards and con- 
trolling determinants ; to another , the texts 
which emphasize the freedom of the gospel; 
to another, the pivotal texts are those deal- 
ing with the second coming of Christ; to 
another, the miracles of healing are in the 
foreground. Some magnify withdrawal 
from the world, renouncing all relations 
with it so far as possible. A few exalt the 
evangelization of the world, while some 
center everything upon a form or a type 
of organization. From the use made of it 
the Bible appears in one group to be su- 
premely a volume concerned with future 
reward and punishment, while to others 



74 The New Orthodoxy 



it is made to be primarily a treasury of 
mystical visions and forecasts of history. 
Thus, in a sense, each sect has its own 
Bible, made by unconscious emphasis upon 
its favorite interests. 

An explanation is suggested by this fact 
for the growth of the Bible in keeping with 
the spirit of the age. Gradually the sacred 
writings have been felt to support causes 
of reform and progress, abolition of slavery, 
woman's freedom, economic justice, and 
prohibition, though in the course of attain- 
ing such reforms the Bible has also been 
appealed to for the sanction of the direct 
opposites. The realization of this possi- 
bility of taking the Bible for the support of 
widely different points of view has in recent 
years led to questioning whether there is 
not some standard afforded by the Bible 
itself and by the course of history which 
might furnish a more stable and convincing 
interpretation. Partly through the inter- 
est of our time in social problems and 
partly through a reading of the whole of 
Scripture in the light of its greatest mes- 



Its Growing Bible 



75 



sages a better point of view and method 
have been discovered. The biblical stu- 
dent today seeks to free himself from the 
presuppositions of the traditional creeds 
and from the bias of any particular sects. 
He is better able to do this because the 
creeds and doctrines have been so thor- 
oughly criticized and appraised in the light 
of the historical and social conditions out 
of which they arose. The method of mod- 
ern scientific analysis and comparison has 
done its work in this field as elsewhere, and 
the result is the understanding of the Bible 
in the light of its own unfolding moral and 
spiritual conceptions. 

The Bible thus attained makes a new 
and profound appeal to our time, for it is 
now a collection of writings reflecting the 
history of a religiously gifted people in their 
growth and aspirations. Within that his- 
tory the prophetic utterances of the Old 
Testament and the words of Jesus mark 
the high peaks from which all the rest is 
surveyed and estimated. So aptly and 
searchingly do the social judgments of the 



76 The New Orthodoxy 



prophets appeal to the social conscience of 
the present that in certain respects they 
seem like reformers of the twentieth cen- 
tury. At the same time the more adequate 
knowledge of Jesus has put him above all 
the prophets and given him a new hold 
upon the spiritual imagination and ideal- 
ism of the best minds of the new social 
order. In this reconstruction of the bib- 
lical material and perspective the book has 
become a source of increasing inspiration 
and moral incentive. Some attempts have 
been made to reprint the text in a way to 
bring out this organization of it around the 
character and work of Jesus. His sayings 
have been underlined in some editions. 
Some have advocated the re-editing of the 
Bible in still more radical ways to make 
clear the central, controlling position of 
Christ. It is widely felt that the elimina- 
tion of much comparatively irrelevant and 
incongruous material would greatly clarify 
and magnify the real message of the book 
and the cause of true religion. Out of its 
living Word, as from a fountain of cleansed 



Its Growing Bible 



77 



and purified water, would flow more re- 
freshing streams. This Word, like all 
great utterances, is a constant source of 
new inspiration and wisdom. It is a grow- 
ing and inexhaustible treasury of riches and 
power for the noblest enterprises of man. 

There is a third sense in which the Bible 
is a growing collection of sacredly impor- 
tant writings. Not only has it gradually 
grown through a long past into the form 
in which it was fixed by the Authorized 
Version of King James, and not only does 
it grow in its use by being interpreted by its 
own highest ideals, but it grows in a third 
manner. It expands by the assimilation 
to itself of the great religious literature 
of other peoples and by the contribu- 
tions of new prophets and teachers in the 
expanding life of the church. The days of 
the old exclusiveness in religion as in all 
other forms of life are happily passing. 
Within a century the sacred books of many 
races have become available through the 
prodigious labors of armies of scholars. 
What Max Mueller did by the translation 



78 The New Orthodoxy 



of the sacred books of the East is typical 
and expressive of the new and larger spirit- 
ual inheritance we are receiving. Just as 
a touchstone for understanding Hebrew 
and Christian documents has been pro- 
vided in the enlightened social and moral 
judgment of modern Christendom, so also 
a standard has been therein secured for 
appreciation of the best in the great litera- 
tures of the world. God has not left him- 
self without a witness among any people. 
It has come to be regarded as an immoral 
conception of the divine nature to attribute 
to him the kind of favoritism which has 
dominated the church in the past. Every- 
where in the prayers and songs and 
symbolism of the Hindu, Persian, and 
Confucianist writings are sentiments akin 
to those of our Old Testament Psalms and 
Prophets. When the magnet of Christian 
idealism is brought into contact with them, 
many great words rise out of these deposits 
and cling to it with the force of an elemental 
kinship. Deep calleth unto deep in all the 
vast waters of man's inner life. Nothing 



Its Growing Bible 



79 



but an arbitrary limitation of the canons 
of the various faiths prevents the recogni- 
tion of this fact. As those limitations are 
swept away in the fires of criticism and of 
kindling human brotherhood, the common 
elements are seen and fused together. As 
internationalism grows and better ac- 
quaintance is established, this common 
possession will become clearer and the 
mutual understandings come into focus. 

Thus the Bible grows by the inclusion of 
kindred works. The principle of inclusive- 
ness is extending also to contemporary 
authors. This is strikingly illustrated in 
the development of the hymnology of the 
church. It was at first limited to the 
Psalms. Gradually there grew up beside 
them the lyrics of the living faith. Some- 
times these were the cries of priest or monk 
or lonely pilgrim. Sometimes they were 
the music of unordained hearts flowing 
forth spontaneously. From all such sources 
the church has appropriated its hymns and 
carols, its anthems and oratorios. Modern 
hymnbooks are the blending in Christian 



8o The New Orthodoxy 



worship of harmonious notes from very 
diverse minds and lives. Yet they are not 
thereby weakened, but made ampler and 
more vital. The songs of David are bound 
up with those of the Crusaders and Puri- 
tans and modern liberals. Isaac Watts 
and Charles Wesley keep company in the 
great choir with Bernard of Clairvaux, 
Cardinal Newman, and Bishop Brooks. 
And what shall be said of the presence 
here in an evangelical hymnal of Gilbert 
K. Chesterton, Algernon C. Swinburne, 
Goethe, Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Felix Adler, Tennyson, and Whittier ? 

In all essential respects the hymnbook is 
the expanded edition of the Book of Psalms, 
developed and adapted to the enlarging 
vision and spiritual aspiration of the 
church. Fortunately no censorship nor 
creedal test has been able to deprive us of 
this rich commingling of the praises and 
prayers of men of widely varying outlook. 
They have found their place in the sanc- 
tuary because of their faith in brotherhood 
and unselfish service. Their words have 



Its Growing Bible 81 

already become integral parts of our work- 
ing Bible. They are admitted to the canon 
of our lyrical Scriptures and they bear ap- 
pealing witness to the genuine catholicity 
of our moods of devotion. 

It is a simple question which this fact 
occasions. If the poems of these writers 
are thus freely incorporated in our Bible, 
why may we not also add their other 
equally great and spiritual writings ? Have 
not Tennyson and Whittier and Bryant 
and Lowell and Phillips Brooks given us 
other divine gifts of wisdom and beauty ? 
Having opened the way to this great com- 
pany of prophets and teachers, how shall 
we again close the doors upon them and 
exclude them from the sacred canon? 
And when they have entered not only sing- 
ing their songs but bringing also their prose 
and proverbs, how is it possible to separate 
from them playwrights like Shakespeare 
and Maeterlinck, or scientists like Kepler 
and Darwin, or philosophers like John 
Locke and William James? We cannot 
believe that God has withdrawn from his 



82 The New Orthodoxy 



world or is less present than of old. His 
living Word finds voice now as in every age. 
The divine volume enlarges with the com- 
ing of each new prophet. Inspired writers 
gather in growing companies to lift the 
light of wisdom and beauty upon the as- 
cending path of man's purer and more 
abundant life. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
CHANGING GOAL 

Christianity began, if we may trust the 
impressions gained from a fair reading of 
the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
with a challenge to turn from the hope of 
an immediate establishment of a visible 
Kingdom of God on earth to the founding 
of it as an inner kingdom of life and right- 
eousness. In the teaching of Jesus one feels 
an urgent appeal on behalf of friendliness 
and generous kindliness between man and 
man and between man and God. The 
pure, intimate affection of lovers is exalted 
into the model for all men and God. Such 
a love impels to the forgiveness of repeated 
offenses and to reconciliation with enemies. 
It leads a man to lay down his very life for 
his friend. Full of compassion for others, 
it begets nobility and restraint for one's 
self. Nor does Christianity leave one with 

83 



84 The New Orthodoxy 



a mere rule and injunction. It furnishes 
vital human relations in which these quali- 
ties are already dominant. Naturally 
family affection springs into beauty in all 
human societies. Jesus made that his 
starting-point. Father and son, neighbor 
and friend, husband and wife, brother and 
brother — these are all bound together by an 
elemental affection which is also capable 
of extension to strangers and to the in- 
visible God himself. The early disciples 
confirmed that faith by clinging to each 
other and to their Master with a loyalty 
which was spontaneous and measureless. 
By the charm of his spirit and the appeal 
of his hopes they were made as one family, 
as one company of comrades. As they 
gathered about him on the shore of the 
lake or sat with him in an upper room at 
the close of a meal and talked of their 
dreams, they felt the bonds of their fellow- 
ship powerful enough to encompass the 
world. It was the fact that Christianity 
became a living communion as well as a 
doctrine which enabled it to strike root and 



Its Changing Goal 85 



to resist all opposition. So vivid and 
imaginative was that fellowship that it 
could not be broken by time or death. 
When Jesus was no longer with them in 
physical presence, they still clung to him as 
alive in their hearts. After the generation 
had passed which knew him face to face, 
another generation, to which Paul be- 
longed, formed a yet more intimate and 
persuasive comradeship with him. Paul 
became the apostle of that religion of love 
and swept through the cities of the gentile 
world proclaiming it. Everywhere indi- 
viduals responded and formed societies or 
churches in which the dominant personal- 
ity was Jesus, who had died but who 
lived in the affection of his followers and 
in the alluring faith in his kingdom of 
love. 

In the feeling of those churches, as with 
Jesus himself, this world is in close relation 
to the abode of God in heaven. To Jesus 
in his reverence and sense of immediate 
providence the heavenly Father was very 
near. In his vivid imagination the future 



86 The New Orthodoxy 



life and Judgment Day were close at hand. 
Such matters were not estimated in terms 
of space and time, but in their power over 
the heart and will. His followers caught 
the same urgency and lived in a universe 
whose physical structure was not known 
and which had little meaning for them ex- 
cept in moral and religious terms. The 
heavenly realms were just beyond the 
clouds, through which in exalted moments 
they seemed to penetrate. There Christ 
dwelt at the right hand of God, keeping 
watch above his faithful followers, acces- 
sible to them in prayer, and preparing to 
come again in dazzling glory. 

As persecutions arose and the Second 
Coming was delayed, attention centered 
more on the future heavenly world. As 
the struggles and sufferings increased for 
the church on earth, its saints took com- 
fort in the thought of the other world. 
In the course of centuries that simple, 
natural feeling became organized into a 
theology which magnified that other world 
still more and became pessimistic about the 



Its Changing Goal 87 



present. The great creations of the Greek 
mind, especially of Plato and Aristotle, 
were employed to build out that concep- 
tion to vast proportions. The impressive 
scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages 
marked its climax. Then the discoveries 
of modern science as to the dimensions of 
the earth and the heavens added the im- 
measurable distances of astronomy and the 
geological periods of time to the picture of 
the universe. It was in the last century 
that the difficulties involved in this view 
became too acute to be borne. Men could 
not have the same intimate and vivid feel- 
ing for a literal heaven so far away in the 
future and so entirely incongruous with all 
the discoveries of science. If Laplace, a 
scientist of rank, could say, "I have swept 
the heavens with my telescope and find no 
God there," it is not surprising that many 
common people have quickly concluded 
that science has made short work of the 
whole fabric of religion merely by showing 
that it employs inadequate conceptions of 
nature. 



88 The New Orthodoxy 



So much of the imagery of Christianity 
was bound up with that little world of vis- 
ible spaces and appreciable time that the 
definition of its goal was naturally set in 
the same framework. The hope of the 
early Christians was to be worthy to enter 
heaven and to live there forever. Their 
faith scarcely sought to redeem the whole 
world. Roman civilization and degener- 
ate Greece and barbaric tribes offered too 
great opposition to the early Christians, 
lowly and impotent in the things of this 
world. It is not strange that they con- 
cluded that their task was to persuade as 
many as possible to flee this world and only 
to exist here as though already citizens of 
heaven. They could learn to be patient 
with much injustice. Even slaves could 
bear their servitude in such a way as to 
convince their masters of the great superi- 
ority of the Christian faith. Some day all 
their burdens would be lifted and they 
would find themselves transformed into 
kings and rulers in a happier sphere. They 
hardly had the opportunity to know that 



Its Changing Goal 



89 



under fair conditions their religion would 
furnish them the most satisfying life for 
this present world as well as for the here- 
after. As it was, their faith was often the 
occasion of their suffering and outward 
misery. Many influences thus conspired 
to keep their eyes fixed on the other world 
as their destination and hope. That ex- 
pectation for the future continued to domi- 
nate the church down to very recent times, 
and is even being renewed by some heralds 
of the second coming. But another and 
more attractive goal has arisen before the 
modern Christian. It is that of the enrich- 
ment and enlargement of human life here 
and now in the conviction that this makes 
the most of the present and is also the 
best possible preparation for any future 
there may be. 

This goal is in spirit much like that 
which constituted the earliest ideal of 
Jesus, that is, the social message of his 
teaching. His kingdom of love and service 
already had its foundation in the natural 
affection of friends and neighbors. If the 



90 The New Orthodoxy 



leaven of that gracious faith could have 
spread throughout the world without the 
persecutions and obstructions which have 
been raised against it, perhaps the other- 
world goal of the historic church would not 
have developed. But few will doubt that 
it was better to have the dream of a king- 
dom of love preserved to us in the setting 
of a distant future life than to lose faith 
in it entirely. Today, however, conditions 
have radically changed. Christianity is no 
longer the religion of slaves and underlings. 
It is the religion of the mightiest nations on 
earth. Its representatives possess wealth 
and power and preferment. It is no longer 
in the attitude of a suppliant, nor in that of 
an outsider and antagonist, but it sits in 
the councils of state and of industry and 
of science. Men who at least call them- 
selves Christians are among the leaders in 
all these things. 

For this reason and for many others the 
conception of Christianity as centering 
chiefly in another life is rapidly losing its 
hold. That which is coming into favor is 



Its Changing Goal 



9i 



the hope of Christianizing the social order 
itself, as Professor Rauschenbusch has 
phrased it. Here is taken into account 
the natural goodness and forward-moving 
tendency of human nature, its capacity for 
improvement, for measureless unselfish- 
ness, and for nobility and ideality of char- 
acter beyond all calculation or present 
imagination. Many comparisons and con- 
trasts between the old and the new are 
already familiar to popular thought. To 
state them in balanced sentences has the 
value of emphasis, though it is not without 
the dangers of brevity and exaggeration. 

The old was static; the new is dynamic. 
The one sought perfection; the other seeks 
improvement. One was given; the other 
is to be gradually achieved. The first was 
prescribed; the second is to be progres- 
sively discovered. That goal depended on 
providence miraculously transforming the 
soul; this modern goal depends upon 
learning by experience as revealed in the 
lives of great men in the past and in scien- 
tific observation and experiment in the 



92 The New Orthodoxy 



present. Religion then was apart from 
life, from the state, and from practical 
affairs; religion now is integral with life in 
all its forms. In the old days it lacked 
variety and the richness of individuality; 
in these days it is specialized and made 
concrete by the peculiar duties and rela- 
tions given to each person by virtue of his 
place in society. The old had a separate 
unique literature; the new regards all 
noble literature as its medium. The tradi- 
tional system had a special priesthood; the 
present order magnifies the priesthood of 
all true believers. The old attitude de- 
spised and feared the natural order which 
it called the world; the new loves the 
natural, especially in its service of social 
ideals. In the past there has been diffi- 
culty in using the fine arts in religion; at 
present they are means of the most impres- 
sive symbolization of the new spiritual 
values. For a long time Christ has been 
unreal and remote; at last he is becoming 
human and natural. God was the infinite 
veiled Being; he is now drawing near even 



Its Changing Goal 



93 



at the risk of seeming finite. Transcen- 
dental mysticism was not difficult for the 
faith of yesterday; a natural, winsome 
mysticism throbs in the soul of today. 
The former ideal of the good man was 
the saintly soul, serene and at peace, 
withdrawn from the common struggle; 
the present ideal is of a man sinewy 
and full of courage, working in the 
midst of the human tasks, clear-headed 
and good-natured, conscious of far hori- 
zons, to which also his deeds have 
reference. 

At last, then, religion has come to reckon 
with the fact that its highest quest is not 
for a supernatural order but just for natural 
goodness in largest and fullest measure. 
Through long centuries it has nourished 
a deep antagonism to mere morality. 
Natural goodness, it was felt, needed also 
a churchly consecration. Religion claimed 
to possess a peculiar sanctity accessible 
only through its ministrations. It is yet 
widely viewed in that light. Professor 
Coe, who has a right to speak on this 



94 The New Orthodoxy 



subject both as a psychologist and as a 
Christian, says: 

Some among us are confused, timid, and non- 
committal because they do not clearly see how 
being religious is different from simply living a 
good life. Others are waiting for some special, 
phenomenal revelation which shall convey a mes- 
sage not otherwise obtainable. All such persons 
are like the bird and the fish in the poem — 

"Oh, where is the sea?" cried the fish; and 
"Oh, where is the air ?" cried the bird. 

Let such men know that the religious experience 
is not something different from living a good life, 
but just living it more abundantly. 

The task of religion, then, is not that of cul- 
tivating a life apart from natural interests 
and practical concerns, but is rather the 
pursuit of such normal ideals with religious 
faith and enthusiasm. When a person de- 
votes himself to any cause with zeal and 
fidelity, it is said of him that he makes that 
cause his religion or he works at it reli- 
giously. This is one of the simplest ways 
of understanding religion. It is an ex- 
traordinary enthusiasm for a cause. As a 



Its Changing Goal 



95 



recent writer puts it, "Mere morality is 
prosaic, cool, exact; religion is imaginative, 
emotional, exaggerated." He adds, "Any 
man deserves to be called religious by 
whom an ideal of life has been so heartily 
and loyally espoused that it lifts him, in 
some measure, above the power of temp- 
tation to seduce or of ill fortune to de- 
press." Accordingly the highest type of 
religion today is that which has the finest 
devotion to the most adequate ideal of life. 
Many sects display the most intense emo- 
tional interest in small or partial programs 
of living. They are devoted to health, or 
to socialism, or to rescue work in the slums, 
or to the millennial dawn, or to individual 
salvation. It is difficult to secure allegi- 
ance to a comprehensive program, which 
is the very thing needed. This is one rea- 
son for a religious organization such as the 
church. It enables each member to have 
the sense of participating in a many-sided 
agency the details of which he may not be 
able to know individually but which are 
known and cared for by persons in whose 



g6 The New Orthodoxy 



judgment and fidelity he is able to confide. 
In the support of the institution he is aid- 
ing many causes and participating in a 
fuller life than is possible without such an 
organization. He is also in turn subject- 
ing himself to the larger relations which a 
social group makes possible. By means of 
these he is carried along through the inter- 
action of many social currents into larger 
problems and stimulated to find their solu- 
tion. The religious society is like the 
larger community of which it is a part. It 
makes it possible for an individual to 
specialize in his own work and yet share in 
the common, comprehensive enterprise. 
Just as plasterers and painters can exist 
only in a society where there are carpen- 
ters, brickmasons, truck-drivers, and ac- 
countants, so a man who is occupied with 
the study of the Greek language needs a 
society where others specialize in cooking, 
tailoring, engineering, and other things. 
If he recognizes this fact and realizes that 
the other activities are as important as his 
own, and if he maintains respect and neigh- 



Its Changing Goal 97 



borliness toward the persons in those other 
pursuits, then he is so far religious. If he 
views his own labor as the only kind worth 
while, or as of supreme importance, then he 
is selfish. If he thinks of himself as help- 
ing in his sphere to the best of his ability to 
add to the intelligence and beauty and 
efficiency of the life of a great social order, 
he is religious. 

The religious goal may thus be seen in 
the way a man takes himself and his work. 
It may be said that there is but one sub- 
stance or material or function in what we 
call lif e and that everything depends on the 
way we use it. Each normal person labors, 
eats, loves, plays, wonders, suffers, and 
hopes. Whether he is a villain or a saint 
is determined by the attitude in which he 
does these things. To be a Christian is to 
do them generously, with sympathy and 
intelligence for the ideal human value in- 
volved. This may be illustrated in con- 
nection with simple acts, such as building 
a fire in a grate, running a business, or ex- 
periencing a friendship. To build a fire for 



98 The New Orthodoxy 



warmth on a cold day might be called a 
practical act. To do so when the house is 
already warm in order to enjoy the crack- 
ling flames might illustrate the aesthetic 
interest. To kindle the fire to test the 
chimney or to make experiments with fuel 
is the scientific way of doing things. To 
make the fire for a sick child and to feel in 
doing so sympathy and human interest for 
the child and the home and the outreach- 
ing significance of its life is to give the act 
of building the fire a religious quality. A 
business undertaking, such as conducting 
a store, may likewise be carried on in a 
variety of ways. The outward acts may be 
practically the same. At least to conduct 
a store it is necessary to purchase goods, 
to display them, to deal with customers, 
to employ labor, and to pay taxes. If a 
man simply says, "Business is business," 
and works primarily to develop the largest 
trade possible and to clear the most profits, 
then we call him practical. Obviously it is 
not far from that attitude to one of hard- 
ness and selfishness and immorality. On 



Its Changing Goal 



99 



the other hand, the merchant may realize 
that the public is best served by a store 
which looks out for fair profits, thereby 
being able to carry a larger stock and to 
meet the exigencies of trade in the most 
facile and accommodating manner. In so 
far as all transactions are open and fair, the 
community well served, and the labor 
properly dealt with, the store is a moral in- 
stitution. But the merchant may take 
particular pride in his building, in his 
window displays, in the trimness of his 
delivery wagons, in the general air of refine- 
ment and taste throughout his system. In 
so far he reveals an aesthetic interest. 
Now it is conceivable that the merchant 
is also concerned about improving the 
wages and working conditions of his em- 
ployees, in co-operating with other mer- 
chants in limiting hours of business, in 
associating with other citizens to improve 
the streets, the schools, the living condi- 
tions of the community. He is willing to 
regard his business as a factor in the larger 
interests of his fellow-men and to use some 



ioo The New Orthodoxy 



of his profits to bring lecturers and enter- 
tainers to the city. He will use some of 
his earnings to educate a worthy boy he 
knows and let the boy decide for himself 
later what he will do in the world. At last, 
in his moments of deepest reflection, the 
merchant acknowledges that what he has 
accomplished has been through combina- 
tions of events and the wills of other per- 
sons in a most complex and far-reaching 
manner. His own part has been real 
enough and important; but in relation to 
the whole system in which he acts he is but 
one factor, dependent and bound up with 
the whole system of society, its order, com- 
munication, good-will, and fidelity. The 
forces of nature also enter into his achieve- 
ments. Trade is related to crops, and 
crops to sun and rain and mellow autumn. 
If he is a man as well as a merchant, a per- 
son as much as an accountant, will he not 
here feel some awe and reverence for the 
life which encompasses him, without whose 
co-operation he is lost and by whose sup- 
port he gathers all his gains ? This feeling 



Its Changing Goal 101 



is for natural human beings a sense of wider 
personal relations, of an intimate and vital 
social fellowship, of devout and reverent 
consciousness of God. When a man is able 
now and then to survey his business in that 
perspective and in that mood, he is reli- 
gious. 

Friendship, too, may be practical and 
aesthetic, and moral and religious. It may 
perhaps be any one of the others and not be 
religious, though that is doubtful; but it is 
certain that it cannot be religious in the 
truest measure without also being useful 
and beautiful and noble. 

What, then, is the goal of religion ? Not 
escape from the natural relations, nor the 
repetition of prayers and creeds, nor the 
cultivation of communion with ideal beings 
of the past or of celestial realms. Any of 
these may be necessary at times, but they 
are only parts of a larger whole, means to 
a more inclusive end. The goal of reli- 
gion is the fulfilment of the normal duties 
and opportunities of life as we experi- 
ence it, with sympathy and idealism 



io2 The New Orthodoxy 



and passionately unselfish devotion. This 
means that we live the life of our race, eat- 
ing and loving, toiling and playing, learning 
and teaching, watching and praying, ad- 
venturing and discovering, suffering and 
repenting, for our children and our neigh- 
bors, for our country and for humanity, 
for the whole dear world and God. If we 
build churches, they are way stations and 
not terminals. If we picture new Jerusa- 
lems, it is not to predetermine for all time 
the city of our hearts' desire but to visu- 
alize our hopes and to take our bearings 
while we journey. We are well aware that 
Jerusalem must be retaken and rebuilt over 
and over again in the wars of God. The 
modern spirit glories in the vision of an in- 
definitely great future in which through the 
same process of growth and renewal by 
which we live now we may go on to greater 
and nobler attainments. 

We are therefore confronted with the 
spectacle of life whose goal is not once for 
all set up and fixed, but which is put for- 
ward and lifted higher as we labor and 



Its Changing Goal 103 



aspire. The dream of the present is of 
a free society whose chief aim shall be 
to furnish to all its members the greatest 
possible power of intelligence, and will, 
and sympathy, and capacity for social 
co-operation and progress. That requires 
intelligence and the constant improvement 
of popular education. It demands a 
wholesome and stimulating social atmos- 
phere of freest interaction and emulation 
for the energizing of the will. It means 
the closest comradeship and the finest 
sympathetic imagination, such as is now 
momentarily realized in times of crises, 
as in the Japanese earthquake and in the 
revelations of unselfish devotion through 
the Red Cross in any disaster. 

The function of the church is to make 
that ideal of a free and growing brother- 
hood of all mankind real to the experience 
and to the imagination of men. After all 
this is not so different from that which it 
has done for the souls of men in the past. 
Certainly Jesus summoned his followers 
into a companionship of adventure and 



io4 The New Orthodoxy 



faith on behalf of fuller friendship and 
deeper love. It may be said that the 
course of thought since the seventeenth 
century has been the elaboration of the 
value of a society in which the individual 
soul could come to its own in a kingdom of 
good- will. And surely modern social re- 
formers would be satisfied if they could feel 
that adequate progress were being made in 
the permeation of the race with the kind- 
liness and idealism of Jesus. That would 
mean the cultivation of science to under- 
stand what love really requires us to do. 
It would mean better organization of the 
state to make the ideals effective. It 
would mean better care of childhood, in 
whose plastic soul lie all the possibilities of 
realizing the most wonderful dreams of the 
sages and prophets yet to be. We cannot 
ignore the past nor can we be slaves to it. 
No more can we merely trust everything 
to the future; we must anticipate it and 
live in it as well as in the present. 

We are more thoroughly convinced than 
we ever were before that an international 



Its Changing Goal 105 



society and brotherhood is not only pos- 
sible but necessary to the onward move- 
ment of the life of every individual of us. 
Whether we are conscious of it or not, the 
state of men on the other side of the world 
affects the welfare of every one of us. It 
has been religion more than trade or diplo- 
macy or literature which has realized this 
fact and has acted accordingly by send- 
ing heralds of brotherhood literally without 
purse or scrip into the uttermost parts of 
the earth. By their labors impressive evi- 
dences of the widespreading ideal of 
brotherhood are increasing over the whole 
earth. The fact that national greed and 
selfishness are felt to be inimical to the 
welfare of mankind is due in no small degree 
to the realization that it violates the sacred 
hope and faith which are already steadily 
rising to consciousness among socialists and 
laborers as well as among philosophers and 
missionaries. 

Man has climbed far from the depth of 
his savagery and isolation. He will not 
forfeit the heights he has gained, nor those 



io6 The New Orthodoxy 



beyond, upon which his eager vision opens. 
He has heard the Christmas bells of the 
spirit, and he wakes to answer them with 
passionate and boundless good-will. 

Hark! the bells ringing! 

In the deep night, in the depth of the winter of 
Man, 

Lo! once more the son is born. 

O age-long, not in Nazareth alone, 
Nor now today — but through ail ages of the 
past, 

The bells of Christmas ringing: 

The Savior-music like a dream from heaven 

Touching the slumbering heart. 

Sweet promise which the people with unerring 

instinct cling to! 
O winter sun arising never more to set! 
O Nature slowly changing, slow transforming 

to the hearts of men, 
Shrine of the soul, shrine of the new-born god — 

of Man himself. 



CHAPTER V 



THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
NEW DRAMA 

If the significance of particular features 
of the religious life is to be appreciated, they 
need to be seen and felt in relation to the 
total living process in which they appear. 
Any religion remote from one's own is 
likely to seem to consist of disconnected 
factors without life or meaning. On this 
account primitive religions have appeared 
as the most grotesque and senseless mum- 
mery. Interpreters generally fail to per- 
ceive the practical ends and intense hopes 
which dominate the ceremonials even of 
the lowest savages and the most alien 
pagans. They see only the weird cos- 
tumes, the painted bodies, the blood and 
ochre markings on the ground, the simple 
sticks and stones, the smoldering fire; they 
hear through the darkness the moaning, 
shrieking, and chanting, the fearful noise 
107 



io8 The New Orthodoxy 



of the bull-roarers, and at intervals the 
recital of fanciful myths and strange 
prayers. Readers often turn away from 
the accounts of the Indian snake dances 
or of the Australian initiation ceremonies 
with disgust and pity. They do not realize 
what these things really mean to the par- 
ticipants. The snakes are the rain gods, 
and the gifts of nature depend upon them. 
The Australians are infusing into the new 
generation the literal blood and substance 
of their ancestors. They are reverently 
endeavoring to guarantee for the future the 
maintenance of the best things gained in 
the past. They feel themselves to be en 
rapport with the brave, wise men of the 
elder days and with the gods who rule the 
world. They are not engaged in make- 
believe, but are sharing in the life-and- 
death struggle to insure the welfare and 
power of the tribe. Every costume and 
decoration, every stick and weapon em- 
ployed, every cry and chant, has a vital 
place and part in the momentous under- 
taking. 



Its New Drama 109 



In principle it is the same with modern 
religion. Its parts have to be seen fused 
in the warm, living action of a great enter- 
prise in order to be understood. The cos- 
tume of a priest, like the uniform of a 
soldier, implies many things, and, most of 
all, a profound and tragic cause in which he 
is engaged. That cause is reflected also in 
the attitudes characteristic of all religious 
persons. Their reverence and love and 
faith are all bound up with the goal they 
are striving to attain. The same is true of 
the Bible. It can be appreciated only in 
reference to the action and movement of 
the events out of which its words have 
come. It gives fragmentary and imper- 
fect pictures of the hopes and longings of 
a people in their struggle to realize their 
national and cultural ideals. Those ideals 
were symbolized for them in the majestic 
figure of their God, moving before them as 
a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire 
by night. Riding upon the thundercloud, 
flashing in the lightnings, and sending his 
voice pealing among the mountain tops, he 



no The New Orthodoxy 



was the embodiment of the energy and 
power with which they felt themselves im- 
pelled forward in conquest and in moral 
aspiration. God cannot be understood 
apart from his people, with whose will and 
purpose he is one. Neither can a people 
be understood without reference to their 
God. The God of any people may be seen 
in their purpose, direction, and moral 
idealism. Without a people God becomes 
vague, weak, easily disbelieved, and 
doubted. God cannot be known outside 
of history and living experience. All at- 
tempts to discover him as a fact among 
the facts of nature have failed. No ab- 
stract arguments can demonstrate his 
being; but wherever you plunge into the 
red stream of history and enter the pulsing 
life of actual human beings bound to- 
gether in great societies, there you find 
the name and will and power of God. 

It is the drama of the religious life, then, 
which furnishes the explanation of all the 
factors which appear in it — its attitudes, 
its dramatis personae, its growing Bible, 



Its New Drama in 



and its changing goal. But this drama is 
not a stage play. It is not an afternoon's 
entertainment. It is not the second- 
hand re-enactment of a tragedy which has 
been once accomplished. It is the living 
action of real life in the natural setting of 
land and sea, streets and firesides, shops 
and battlefields. It is a drama in which 
there are no professional actors, but where 
every man takes his role in the action by 
virtue of his nature and his relation to his 
fellows. There is no sharp line between 
the audience and the performers. Rather, 
in the ceaseless movement of events, indi- 
viduals arise in their places and perform 
their tasks. Some eyes are fixed upon 
them where they stand. At the same time 
other persons are elsewhere focusing atten- 
tion. Even the dead do not withdraw 
from the drama. Sometimes they con- 
tinue to arrest the hurrying multitudes 
more than do any living kings or warriors. 
Their voices seem to grow clearer, their 
summons more urgent, as the perspective 
in which they appear lengthens. 



ii2 The New Orthodoxy 



Each person is thus both actor and ob- 
server. The range of his action is far 
larger than the field of his vision. Many 
times in his life he is called upon, not to 
speak lines which he has learned for the 
occasion, but to improvise actions and 
words suited to situations which have 
never existed before in all the world. Upon 
his decision turns the fate of the whole act 
and, it may be, of the entire drama. Such 
momentous events in your personal life 
were those in which you determined to en- 
ter your profession, or to move to this city, 
or to this neighborhood, or to vote the 
democratic ticket, or to join the church. 
Of the same kind, but vaster in results, 
were the signing of the Magna Charta to 
guarantee the liberties of England, the 
Declaration of Independence by the Ameri- 
can colonies, the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion by Abraham Lincoln, and the Treaty 
of Versailles which brought to a close the 
most colossal and the most futile war of 
history. These were crucial points in the 
life of mankind. They were of the original, 



Its New Drama 



"3 



elemental action which constitutes the 
fundamental and essential drama of human 
life. These scenes are enacted over and 
over again by the play-actors, and some- 
thing of the original force and meaning is 
felt each time. Indeed, the make-believe 
drama has its right to exist and its value for 
us in the degree to which it is able to re- 
instate for all who behold it the sense of a 
mighty crisis to be resolved by the deeds 
of the individuals present on the stage. 
For the time being the actors become the 
historical characters responsible for the 
course of events, and the audience enter 
into the movement of the play, approving 
the hero and manifesting indignation 
against his enemies. The drama of the 
theater has in this way a vital relation 
to the actual drama of daily life. When 
the spectators have witnessed a stirring 
representation of the battles of Washing- 
ton's army in our war for independ- 
ence, they gain new appreciation of what 
we owe to those hardy colonists and their 
valiant leader. 



ii4 The New Orthodoxy 



The drama of the religious life is of the 
original, elemental kind. Only when it 
has lost touch with reality does it take on 
the manner of a spectacle. So long as it 
is the direct and spontaneous expression of 
deep needs and true satisfaction its cere- 
monials are integral parts of life and are 
just as essential as the most practical ac- 
tivities. That was true of the elaborate 
ceremonials of the church in the Middle 
Ages. They were the very means of life 
to the souls of men. They were not exter- 
nal or artificial or in need of defense. By 
the elaborate celebration of the Mass men 
literally obliterated their sins and received 
in the Eucharist the actual body of God. 
In that miracle of grace was constantly 
enacted the drama of the divine love. 
Every feature of the worship was eloquent 
with that one fact. The cathedral itself 
was the architectural expression of the 
surpassing grandeur of the supersensible 
world. Its vast arches and high-flung 
spires towered over man's little form with 
the distances and glory of that other realm 



Its New Drama 115 



which they symbolized. Whoever has 
stood in the cathedral at Milan or in 
St. Peter's at Rome cannot efface the mem- 
ory of the impression of vastness and mag- 
nificence, as if all the devices of wonderful 
art had been employed to teach man his 
littleness and transiency in comparison 
with the infinite and eternal things above 
him. All other features of the ritual were 
in keeping with this — the paintings of 
clouds and cherubim in the lofty ceilings, 
the sculptured forms of the transfigured 
saints, high up on the capitals of the giant 
pillars, the echoing tones of the organ and 
the ethereal voices of boy choirs, the slowly 
intoned prayers in an archaic tongue, and 
the bent, suppliant posture of the wor- 
shipers. They were passive and depend- 
ent recipients of favors from the world 
above. They were in search of nothing 
which they could merit, nor of anything 
they could create for themselves. None 
but divine power and infinite condescension 
could reach their need and lift them up. 
But so long as all believed in that power 



n6 The New Orthodoxy 



and that measureless grace of God be- 
stowed upon man through those channels 
such rituals and ceremonials were of the 
very essence of reality. Only with the rise 
of different conceptions of human nature 
have these rituals begun to appear as the 
survivals of a passing world. 

Since man has learned to assert himself 
he has found himself stronger and stronger. 
He is no longer a passive suppliant, help- 
less in a predetermined universe. Instead 
of accepting pestilence and misfortune as 
the visitations of an all- wise God who sent 
them for man's discipline, he has set about 
the task of making such things impossible. 
The natural causes of many diseases have 
been found, and those plagues have been 
eradicated. Encouraged by past success, 
new and vaster enterprises are under way 
to gain control of larger and more impor- 
tant areas of life through natural science. 
Therefore the older drama of religion has 
become a beautiful work of the past. For 
the modern man, standing erect in his pride 
of power, the old ceremonial full of pas- 



Its New Drama 117 



sivity and surrender is the symbol of a 
dying age. He may contemplate it with 
a certain admiration and reverence, but he 
cannot believe in it nor endeavor to revive 
it. It has become a drama in the sense of 
being something consciously copied in 
order that, through the momentary illu- 
sion of its reality, it may be entered into 
for appreciation and for the purpose of 
knowing more adequately what we have 
left behind. Like all things from which 
the life has fled, that older drama is no 
longer warm and vibrant. Its constituents 
have fallen apart. One sees fragments of 
its architecture in secular buildings, its 
painting and sculpture exhibited in public 
displays, its doctrines unbelievable, and its 
authority vanished. 

Nowhere is the change more apparent 
than in the f eeling men have about the very 
act and attitude of worship. The idea of 
worship as mere praise and adulation of 
the Creator has become almost irreverent. 
God has come to be regarded in so imma- 
nent and dynamic a way that it seems 



n8 The New Orthodoxy 



quite inconsistent to conceive him as 
honored and gratified by adoration and 
flattery, such as were formerly given to 
tyrants and despots. Perhaps here is to 
be found the source of much indifference 
to the churches. Men have given up the 
forms and words of worship in their inter- 
course with each other and even with their 
superiors. In our democracies men do not 
bow themselves to the ground nor pros- 
trate themselves even before the mightiest 
individuals. With open eyes and confident 
minds they contend together, seek to co- 
operate, and strive to be guided by experi- 
ence and not by authority. They do not 
care for a drama on Sunday which is too 
completely contrasted with the drama in 
which they live all the week. What they 
do crave is some powerful means of dis- 
covering the fuller meaning and larger 
possibilities of their common life. 

The old drama moved between the crea- 
tion of the world and the Day of Judgment. 
Its origin lay in the inscrutable counsels of 
divine wisdom. All of the figures which 



Its New Drama 119 



moved upon its stage were the puppets of 
the omnipotent Will. Their acts, from the 
first deed of rebellion, which brought sin 
and its infinite curse, to their acceptance of 
the proffered salvation, were foreordained 
and once for all decreed. Even the Re- 
deemer, through whom the bondage was 
broken, did not act in his own right but was 
sent into the world and given up to bitter 
pain and death for man's deliverance. To 
the end of time the efficacy of his atone- 
ment was to remain a fathomless mystery, 
for not until the grand assize at the great 
Day of the Lord could it be known who are 
worthy of blessing and who deserve the 
curse. The services of religion, under that 
conception, have been largely devoted to 
cultivating a sense of humility and of un- 
worthiness in the worshiper and an atti- 
tude of resignation for any fate which may 
befall! 

The new drama starts with man's life on 
the earth and with the upward and forward 
tendency within it. It shows, from the 
earliest records, efforts toward something 



i2o The New Orthodoxy 



better and loftier. Everywhere are temples 
and tombs and the sign of uplifted hands. 
In and around these have flowed the in- 
tense desires and aspirations of the unsatis- 
fied soul of man, restless in his age-long 
quest. Often mistaken as to the source of 
his success, always burdened with supersti- 
tions and misconceptions of himself and 
his world, nevertheless he has continued to 
follow the gleam. At last he is finding out 
the immediate causes of many of his bless- 
ings and his ills. With a new joy and cour- 
age in his discovery of scientific knowledge 
and power he is preparing for still greater 
mastery and progress. With all of his old 
reverence for life and with greater zest he 
is not merely seeking a city which hath 
foundations. He is building it. He does 
not just sit silently listening in his worship, 
but he wrestles with God and, like Jacob of 
old, exacts his blessing. The drama which 
he is enacting is one of intense activity and 
profound thoughtfulness. This has quite 
changed the meaning of worship. It is 
now no longer the contemplation of a series 



Its New Drama 121 



of celestial events in which man beholds 
himself the passive recipient of divine favor 
or wrath. It is rather the survey of the 
long path of past experience and the mem- 
ory of the heroic actors who have toiled 
there and the anticipation of the further 
extension of that path by labor, intelli- 
gence, and unselfish devotion. Through it 
all run the realization of the magnitude of 
the forces involved, the incalculably great 
scale of the events transpiring, and the 
tragic character of the smallest word and 
deed. It is this richness and inexhaustible 
nature of experience which constitutes its 
divine quality. But the divine is no more 
separate and aloof. It is within and or- 
ganic with the human. We surrender the 
old contrast of the human and the divine, 
not by eliminating either one to retain the 
other, but by insisting that life as we find 
it has in it the warmth and intimacy of the 
human and also the dynamic and the out- 
reach of the divine. Life is in this respect 
all of a piece, varied and intricate, but 
undivided. 



i2 2 The New Orthodoxy 



In the drama of the religious life as thus 
conceived the congregation is the unit of 
action and expression. Not the public serv- 
ice, so largely the function of the minister 
and the choir, but the less formal meetings 
of the church for counsel and conference 
illustrate it best. The local church is a 
kind of epitome of the whole social order. 
It undertakes to guide itself by the spirit 
and ideals of a truly religious society. It 
can succeed only as all of its members con- 
sciously and enthusiastically enter into 
that endeavor. Three things are con- 
tinually dramatized in every church, no 
matter how imperfectly: the vast implica- 
tions of our lif e, the intimate personal feel- 
ing of being at home, and the alluring hope 
of a better future. 

The greatness of man's life in the old 
drama was set forth in the very fact of the 
condescension of heaven to take note of 
him. In the new he is accorded a real part. 
A mother feels herself intrusted with a 
wonderful share in the life of the world 
through her child. She is constantly hop- 



Its New Drama 123 



ing to nourish and train him so that he may 
bless mankind. She cannot hide from her- 
self the question of his future usefulness. 
If he could measure up to her wishes for 
him he would bring some good invention, 
make some discovery, accomplish some dis- 
tinguished service. In caring for him she 
thinks of herself as performing a task for 
thousands who are to be helped by him. 
As she herself is the inheritor of the affec- 
tion and yearning watchfulness of count- 
less ancestors, so in turn she is to transmit 
the stream of life through him to countless 
other human beings. Religion calls atten- 
tion to these great distances and to these 
wonderful implications in the plot of every 
human life. Even a sparrow is upheld by 
the whole power of the universe, and man 
is of more value than many sparrows. He 
is therefore called upon to live, not for the 
passing hour, but for all that relates to it 
and for all that grows out of it. In this 
consists man's true nobility: He views 
himself more truly as the child of the ages 
than as the grass of the field. We are 



124 The New Orthodoxy 



gaining more adequate means of estimat- 
ing human influence and responsibility. 
Ibsen's Ghosts is an artistic expression of 
this fact. The great tables of the statistics 
of heredity tell the same story. It was 
recognized by George Eliot as "the sweet 
presence of a good diffused, and in diffusion 
ever more intense!" 

The religious representation of life also 
emphasizes the sense of being at home in 
the world and of extending a yearning love 
to all individuals. The good shepherd 
goes in search of the one lost sheep. The 
redemptive sympathy of modern society 
reaches out toward the poor, the lonely, 
and the separated souls. Religion might 
well dramatize the work of social settle- 
ments, of public schools, of boards of 
health and morals. The necessity of co- 
operation has never been brought home 
to men in the history of the world before 
as at the present time. Society insists 
upon closer supervision of private affairs, 
of individual property, and of business. 
In levying and paying taxes, in the intel- 



Its New Drama 



125 



ligent promotion of social feeling, a degree 
of voluntary consolidation and unification 
has been attained of which earlier centuries 
only dreamed. 

No man liveth unto himself now. That 
has suddenly come to be far more than a 
statement of pious sentiment. It is felt to 
be the very condition and necessity of any 
kind of existence. This dependence of the 
individual upon his group and his partici- 
pation in its practical and ideal life is one 
of the deepest and most vital facts of the 
religious life. The church has need to ex- 
tend this principle in more vivid and com- 
manding ways to individuals not included 
at present in the immediate circle of the 
church. It becomes true of the great souls 
of the past too. They also co-operate with 
us. By their writings and their deeds they 
participate in our deliberation and in our 
estimate of the value and sanctity of our 
religious ideals. They suffer and toil with 
us, and their words of courage and com- 
fort are like counsels of our dearest 
friends. 



126 The New Orthodoxy 



Not only does the church seek to keep 
alive in its members the sense of the dignity 
of human life and of personal worth, but it 
also dramatizes the hopes which are cher- 
ished and toward whose fulfilment every 
energy is dedicated. These hopes revive 
in the company of those who seek them and 
contemplate them. In the older hymns 
the sentiment was, "I'm but a stranger 
here; heaven is my home." In the newer 
hymns we sing, "We are builders of that 
city." 

Religious souls have been variously rep- 
resented in art as in life. They have been 
shown as solitary pilgrims in their search 
for God and peace of soul. They have 
been portrayed as "a noble army, men and 
boys, the matron and the maid, who 
climbed the steep ascent of heaven, thro' 
peril, toil and pain." But there is some- 
thing still more appealing in the dream of 
them as builders of a beautiful city. 

The city is becoming more impressive as 
a symbol of the enlarging spiritual life 
of man. It affords opportunity for com- 



Its New Drama 127 



panionship, for intelligent concerted action, 
for effective brotherhood, and for means for 
growth. Man can see in the city the fruits 
of his labors and the consequences of his 
mistakes. He is thereby brought to terms 
with his own conduct and furnished in- 
centives for indefinite improvement. No 
longer solitary or ascetic, militant or 
visionary, the Christian sees rising about 
him "the glorious golden city." In the 
words of Felix Adler's beautiful hymn: 

We are builders of that city; 

All our joys and all our groans 
Help to rear its shining ramparts; 

All our lives are building-stones: 
Whether humble or exalted, 

All are called to task divine; 
All must aid alike to carry 

Forward our sublime design. 

And the work that we have builded 

Oft with bleeding hands and tears, 
And in error and in anguish, 

Will not perish with our years: 
It will last and shine transfigured 

In the final reign of Right; 
It will merge into the splendors 

Of the City of the Light. 



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